The Potential Impact of ChatGPT and Dall-E2 on Photography and the Arts

“By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.”
| Eliezer Yudkowsky

I can still remember very clearly that in the early days of the Internet, no one could have imagined that anyone would ever be able to break the dominance of Yahoo, Netscape, or Lycos in search engines. Then Google came along and changed the search world, orchestrating and organizing the Internet and target group advertising. Who today thinks it possible that another platform could replace Google? With Google’s great autocracy. Well, it seems we are right there. The tipping point of Google’s algorithm and platform domination.

ChatGPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. It is basically a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. While this was only two months ago, ChatGPT was valued by the Wallstreet Journal at $29 billion on January 5, 2023. The Chatbot ChatGPT uses artificial intelligence to write and debug computer programs, emulate a Linux system, simulate an entire chat room, compose music, write poetry and song lyrics, teleplays, fairy tales, and student essays, answer test questions, and so many other applications. While mimicking human conversation is a chatbot’s primary purpose, journalists have also praised ChatGPT for its adaptability and improvisational abilities.

While the capabilities of this new platform sound wonderful, and many experts speculate that it will knock Google off the search engine throne and change the Internet forever, many critical voices are also emerging. They predict that ChatGPT can become a major security risk that can independently write and spread malicious code using artificial intelligence. Furthermore, these experts see a possible decline in the need to use specialized experts and knowledge workers.

Together with the AI-based image-creating platform Dall-E2, both platforms might threaten knowledge workers as well as artists. In a recent Los Angeles Times article, the journalist talks about how AI automates individual processes in the art scene. Most importantly, they describe how skills, abilities, routines, experience, and practice are becoming obsolete with it. A shortcut seems to exist for artists and experts to achieve their goals faster. Therefore, AI dramatically reduces the value of idea creation to its execution. However, from my point of view, it is exactly the path from the idea to its realization, through numerous detours, modifications, adaptations, and human doubts about the adequacy and the connection to the artist’s personality and his life itself, that makes art. It is not the result that counts. It is the playful path of the artist toward his desired result.

AI platforms can also only work if they are fed with good data and good input, which means they must always build on something that already exists. It will therefore be exciting to see how AI can generate something completely new, out of the box, unanticipated. It will also be necessary to question the input data of these platforms, which often quietly steal and compile images and information on the Internet to train their algorithms.

In any case, AI will impact the art world. We will see many artists using it to create new works and actively incorporating AI into their art-making. There will also be other artists who will reject it. As with any new form of technology, as with any new medium. Let’s remain unprejudiced and leave it up to each artist to decide how they want to create.

In my world, I value simplicity, my personality, my connection with my creative process, my flow, and love of creating projects and images.

If you are further interested in the book, please, have a look at my two blog articles on that topic:
– The Rise of the Machines in AI and in Photography. Part 1.
– The Rise of the Machines in AI and in Photography. Part 2.

Links:
– ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com
– Dall-E2: https://openai.com/dall-e-2
– OpenAI: https://openai.com
– Wallstreet Journal: Jin Berber, Miles Kruppa (2023): CatGPT Creator Is Talking to Investors About Selling Shares at $29 Billion Valuation, ChatGPT, 05/01/2023.
– Los Angeles Times: Molly Crabapple (2022): Op-Ed: Beware a world where artists are replaced by robots. It’s starting now, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-12-21/artificial-intelligence-artists-stability-ai-digital-images, 21/12/2022.