When AI Changes Its Mind

Understanding photographers’ hesitation toward ML features

In this photo, shot in the middle of a gray day, I replaced the sky in an earlier version of Luminar AI. After an update to the app, I can’t replicate the same look.

My newest Smarter Image column is now published at Popular Photography: When AI changes its mind. In it, I explore why many photographers are hesitant to embrace shooting and editing features that are based on machine learning.

It’s not that they don’t like progress or technological advancement. I think it has more to do with not always knowing exactly what you’re going to get when you invoke a feature. Especially when editing photos, we like the repeatability of knowing how controls will affect an image. But when the software is making its own determination about what’s in the frame and what needs to be done, we have to click and see what it comes up with.

Thank you for subscribing here, and hello new subscribers! 👋🏻 This PhotoAI newsletter is mainly serving as a way to announce new Smarter Image columns, but I also want it to be a way for us to communicate directly if you have questions, concerns, or ideas for other AI/ML-related topics to cover. Reply and let me know your thoughts. And please forward this to other folks you think might be interested.

Lastly, a research query: Do you know of anyone working on using AI to create alt text descriptions of photos? It seems like a great feature for services like Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, etc. to provide image context for people with vision limitations. If you know anyone doing this, I’d appreciate an introduction or pointer in the right direction.

Thanks!

Jeff