The Human Eye in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence is here, and it’s not going anywhere.

Overnight, we’ve gained the ability to get instant feedback on our photography, receive improvement ideas we might never have considered, and even remove elements from an image without leaving a trace.

What once felt like science fiction is now everyday normality.

*I loved the peeling paint, AI wanted to erase it.

For someone who grew up in the creative world of the 90s, this shift has been… jarring.

Back then, designers spent weeks turning a concept into a presentable idea. Iterations took time. Experiments took time. Even failures took time.

Now? With a well crafted prompt, you’re halfway to a polished result in seconds.

Used as a tool, AI can be empowering. But believing people will only use it for inspiration, then create their own original work from scratch, feels naive.

AI generates ideas from somewhere. It learns from something. Behind every prompt result sits a creator whose style, essence, or vision was borrowed. Sometimes borrowed heavily.

In time, I believe this will be addressed, regulated, or balanced, but for now, we’re working with a machine that extracts from millions of passionate creators, often without credit.

But what about photography?

Photographers, in general, want to be seen. Humans want to be seen. Even the quiet ones who stay in the background, especially them.

We chase recognition, connection, and a sense of being understood.

The only photographers who eventually stop caring are those who’ve reached a certain zen like state. At that level, 1,000 likes don’t matter. But when that one photographer you deeply respect gives you genuine feedback? That’s when the smile appears.

This human connection is stitched tightly into photography.

We take something real and instantly make it unreal. A photo is always a distortion of reality, an interpretation, a freeze, a version.

You can make it look like someone is mid jump when they’re barely off the ground. You can turn a mundane corner into a cinematic frame.

We notice what others walk past. And we do it using learned structure: layering, color theory, the rule of odds, and so on.

And now, with AI, you can drop your photo into a model and receive suggestions, critique, and even technical ratings your friends or family could never provide.

This is a game changer, especially for photographers who already have a foundation. AI will give you genuinely helpful advice for you to ad, remove, to your liking.

But it will also give you its preferences, shaped by millions of existing images.

And that may push you away from what you’re actually trying to create. AI can’t invent something truly new. It can only remix what already exists.

If you’re lucky enough to have a unique eye and a direction, stick to it. Trust it. Avoid the shortcuts.

But for many others, AI can be an incredible teacher, helping sharpen composition, reading, and intention.

The Lens Is Still Yours

AI is powerful, disruptive, and undeniably useful. It can accelerate your learning, offer honest critique, and open creative doors you didn’t know existed.

But photography, real photography, is still born from a human urge to see and be seen.

The machine can guide you, but it can’t feel for you. It can’t stand in your shoes as you notice the small detail others ignore. It can’t sense the light, the tension, the story, the moment.

Use AI as a tool. But let your own eye lead the way.

The future of photography won’t belong to the fastest creators, it will belong to the most human ones.