AI and photography – real or fake? | by Jenny Kaye
Artificial Intelligence has arrived!
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been in the news a lot recently, amazing us all with what it can do in a short space of time. The arrival of ChatGPT and its ability to write credible articles, poems, academic documents and more is quite revolutionary … and all in the matter of seconds too.
Business owners have discovered that AI can also be used to immediately generate extensive content for social media at the push of a button.
So what does this mean for business? How do you feel about AI generated marketing content rather than hearing directly from the voice of the author? And will AI technology replace professional headshot photographers?
I’d love to know your thoughts so do please comment!
AI and photography
Retouching and editing of photographs has been around for a long time, and we are all aware of the extent to which faces can be retouched, bodies can be changed in shape and objects added or removed from images. Filters with all sorts of special effects are widely used in social media and commonplace. Even with videos, images can be manipulated and “deep-fake” technology is not new – where images are transposed onto other so faces and bodies can be swapped around or removed. You really cannot believe what you see any more.
And now AI has reached the realms of headshot photography with various companies offering you the option to generate a “Business headshot” or LinkedIn style headshot at a fraction of the cost of hiring a professional photographer. Curious to see what they might come up with I decided to road-test the AI headshots. I tested it out using Ai SuitUp! which will generate a set of 100 headshots from 15 photos that you upload of yourself along with a selfie. The selfie is important as they regard that as the key image on which expression is based.
For anyone interested, to generate 100 headshots it currently costs $20 with various discount codes available. This is the website I used – AISuitup!
AI headshot results
What did I find? Well this particular site generates 100 different headshots – with different clothes, hairstyles and backgrounds although the majority of the expressions will be similar to the selfie you upload. Different hairstyles are a little disconcerting, particularly given I have had short hair nearly all my life. This is the sort of selection you will end up with so you can see the range of styles – below are some of the ones that were generated for me.
Author: Jenny Kaye
Photographer – Be present, be visible
From family photography – to event photography – to teen parties or headshots, there are many ways we can work together to create some fabulous images.
My studio is in Beaconsfield (South Buckinghamshire) and offers all you would expect from a creative studio setting (very handy on wet winter days) as well as the option to take photos outside where I have access to a lovely semi woodland setting for lifestyle imagery.
