The recent furore created by a picture released by one arm of the British royal family – which was quickly picked up as being manipulated – has merely added more fuel to the debate about the credibility of the imagery that we’re being presented with on a daily basis. The royal family portrait had only been – badly, as it happens – mildly retouched to tidy up what was a photo taken by an amateur rather than an official photographer. The back story behind its release has since been revealed and the retouching was a lot less than happens following just about any professional portrait photography session, but it served to highlight the bigger issues surrounding AI generated fake images.
However, the royal photo saga also showed that, reassuringly, the world’s major press agencies are able to quickly spot even fairly small post-camera changes to an image and then reject it on the basis of suspect veracity. Mainstream photojournalism is putting a lot of effort into maintaining the integrity of press photography. Where the problem lies is with images that aren’t subjected to these checks and balances, but are still being seen by very large audiences, chiefly, obviously, via social media. Where these so-called ‘deep fake’ images can influence opinions or beliefs to achieve a less-than legitimate outcome, there is clearly cause for great concern… but it isn’t necessarily the disaster that’s being touted as.
For starters, like an April Fool’s joke – and these are getting much more elaborate too – an AI-generated image is pretty easy to spot even if, at first glance, it looks quite
convincing. Of course, many people aren’t especially visually literate, but an artificiality becomes fairly evident if you look a bit more closely. Whether this will always be the case is another matter, and there are the ‘hybrid’ images which combine photo and AI content (such as backgrounds in the case of the latter) that can be harder to spot. Of course, such compositing isn’t at all new, but an AI-generated background can be more realistically unreal.
Nevertheless, we cannot rely on the intelligence or discernment of viewers to separate the lies from the truth, and here both education and regulation are required.
As we’ve already seen with many other aspects of social media, regulation will inevitably fail – or be significantly diluted – if it doesn’t suit the objectives of the owners of these platforms. Education, then, is potentially a far more effective weapon, especially in co-operation with regulations that can work, such as the image provenance and protection initiatives that are starting to be implemented more widely across the industry).
At the recent Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) general assembly in Rome – sister magazine Australian Camera is a member – there was an address by Hans Hartman who is the chair of a USA based organisation called Visual 1st (visit www.visual1st.biz). It operates under the banner of “Re-establishing trust in visuals”, understanding that establishing
the credibility of images is critical for, at the very least, the viability of businesses in the photo and video ecosystems. In the area of generative AI, for example, it’s about understanding the technologies, where they’re heading and what are the implications, both negative and positive.
Take this quote from a recent online fortnightly newsletter (you can sign up for free), “Visual GenAI is in its infancy. Still trying to – and being judged on how well it – replicates the world. Once past that barrier, it will finally be used for other purposes and with greater imagination. It will no longer be this misinterpreted threat to photography, the master replicator, and evolve into its own domain of preference. It has already started to”.
New technologies have always been open to misuse and abuse, and being able to identify when and how this is happening undoubtedly depends on education. The AI art genie cannot be put back in the bottle, but the message here is that it will eventually find its place… and that won’t be at the expense of real photography. In reality, there are many areas of professional photography where it has no direct application or relevance, except to say that it can indirectly influence the perceived integrity of any image… and hence its value. We have already muddied the waters here with rampant Photoshopping, but as professionals the value of an image is the basis of our business… and, as photographers, it all starts with a camera

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• Gourmet Traveller – May 2024
• Riche Magazine – Issue 152 – April 2024