Photographers have always been daring to explore interesting and innovative ways of capturing photos. In a way, the technology always went side by side with photography, as the newest cameras usually have the latest technological innovations built into them.
When you think about it, the way photography advanced in less than a century is simply amazing. The best thing is that this is only the beginning. Right now, photography is in the hands of AI, as many professionals explore possibilities that could happen once those two are combined.
The result? The way we see photography nowadays is completely being reshaped due to artificial intelligence. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular ways AI affects photography. Spoiler alert — you probably used it on your phone.
Facial Recognition
Have you ever tried using those funny Snapchat filters? If you have, you successfully used AI that recognizes your face. Simply put, AI was fed with millions of images of human faces until it started recognizing patterns. All of a sudden, it was able to recognize a human face detected by a camera. Nowadays, many apps use it not only for fun but for many other things as well. Camera apps of new smartphones can adjust the best mode for taking a portrait picture of a person simply by using AI.
Augmented Reality
If you use a fairly new smartphone and type “cat” or “dog” into Google, the search engine will allow you to see a 3D model of the animal you googled. Moreover, Google enables some users with latest-generation smartphones to actually see 3D images of those animals in the real world. In other words, you can have a virtual cat sitting on the floor right in front of you.
Cameras recognize spaces, determine flat surfaces, floors, and many other things. That way, they can place virtual objects into our reality which we can see on our phone screens (hence the name “augmented reality”). Nowadays, there are even games such as Pokemon GO that use AR and incorporate it into the gameplay concept, with players roaming around and catching pokemons that hide in the real world.
Automatic Photo Adjustment
Smartphone manufacturers have also implemented AI into their standard camera software. For example, new Huawei phones have the ability to automatically recognize the scene. They have 19 categories and 500 scenarios for different situations, and AI decides which one is the best when you turn on your camera. For example, when you point your phone camera at a dog, it will immediately recognize it and adjust settings to make the photo optimal.
Will Photographers Become Redundant?
Taking all these things into account, one cannot help but wonder — are photographers going to become redundant in the future? Will AI completely replace them?
Although it’s fairly difficult to say what things would be like in the distant future, it’s safe to say that photographers will NOT become redundant. One of the problems with artificial intelligence is that it doesn’t understand art. Art requires a human touch. It’s something that we want to express using our cameras, and it’s fairly difficult to imagine a machine having such an urge at the moment. Therefore, human creativity and the need to create innovative art is still unsurpassed, and it will remain that way for many years to come.
AI can be a very useful tool in that process, however. As long as it’s there to serve us and not be our master, we can consider AI taken photography a form of art.
