There’s less and less incentive to be a photographer or even a webmaster these days. AI feels like a race to the bottom — I’m genuinely shocked. It’s starting to look like the creative industry is cooked.
That has been the case for a long while now. 15-20 years ago you could make a decent living from licensing images, but Getty and microstock platforms like Shutterstock ended that and pushed many out of the market. At the same time the market was flooded back during the financial crisis when everyone got laid off and picked up a digital camera calling themselves photographers. But there is a brutal reality to photography, just like with real estate agents...you can jump into it easily but it's extremely hard to make a decent living so most give up fairly soon. There is a very thin stratum of photographers that make all the money. That is the case with most creative fields. Graphic designers are going bye-bye, so are art and creative directors that are used to making $300k+ a year.
In my opinion, AI should be restricted to research and development, not handed out for mass use in ways that erode creativity and devalue original work.
#1) AI content cannot be copyrighted. Artists can use AI to generate part of their works and still have their copyrights accepted, but the USCO rule now is that the work must be mostly human inspired and created. Not sure how the USCO intends to judge that on their own and do they actually have the resources to vet all these submissions?
#2) GenAI does not produce large enough images for most fine art uses, you need much much larger images to really be able to print and sell large scale artwork. Most customers with money want the artist's reputation, but AI is gaining traction there as long as the artist already has a reputation and can position themselves as a genius in using AI.
#3) We will never stop this train...it has already left the station and there is far too much money backing it. It's going to take a very heavy toll on the creative fields yes, especially the applied arts, graphic design, commercial photography and advertising...but perhaps even bigger toll on other fields like financial services, government, law and medicine. A lot of jobs will be lost across the board.
I keep seeing non-creatives argue that AI has “levelled the playing field.” But, “If everyone can be a creative, then no one really is.” Just like how, if everyone were rich, no one would actually be rich.
I have seen certain genres of photography which used to be the highest paying genres of photography...for example autos and advertising. I have seen such stunning AI images for food photography, ads and autos that these fields are de-facto already defunct. AI is being used a lot in fashion photography already too.
Certain other fields will fare better as the client needs actual images of actual items and not AI cooked up imaginary BS. One example of that is architectural photography. Clients need their actual buildings shot well, AI cannot cook up high-def images of buildings that don't exist and / or aren't open yet. They have had the ability to render these images already for years, but these clients tend to pay to shoot them via photography after they are built...not just CGI / AI
All of this doesn't even get to the point of how genAI is literally stealing and copying other artist's work. Once the first test cases are decided you can expect a flood of copyright infringement lawsuits against all of these platforms. I think they have built that expense into the business model
