Jos Avery's Instagram is made up entirely of AI-generated images, which he then heavily edits to create amazing portraits. And most of his followers don't realize they're AI.
Is AI photography even photography?
Avery recently confessed via Ars Technica that he uses Midjourney, an AI image-rendering tool, to generate his portraits, which he then retouches in Photoshop. The photos are incredible, but if you’re familiar with Midjourney, you might immediately notice the “house look”: The Midjourney people all have a vacant, thousand-yard stare. The fact that Avery felt the need to come clean, coupled with a recent ruling by the U.S. Copyright Office that Midjourney’s photos cannot be copyrighted, goes to show how confusing the field of AI art is right now. But is it even art?
“Despite the fact that AI can be used to create stunning imagery, there is still a stigma attached to using AI as source material. Our first reaction is often to view AI as cheating, and this is evident in the reactions of viewers and artists alike. Yet it’s clear that AI has revolutionized traditional photography, allowing photographers to create stunning imagery without the need for a camera,” Jared Floyd, founder and executive producer at Ajax Creative, told Lifewire via email.
Art can be anything from a carefully crafted painting to a splash of water in the desert sand. What they all have in common is intent. So while an AI can’t generate art on its own because it has no concept of context or intent, it can certainly be used by a human to create art. After all, what’s the difference between telling Photoshop to fill in a computer-generated sky behind a portrait subject and telling an app to create the portrait subject itself?
