Adobe's War on Photographers

so I have very mixed feelings about AI especially when it comes to the photography industry open AI shocked the world less than 2 years ago when it Unleashed chat GPT suddenly everyone was talking about how AI would become our new personal assistant Microsoft even named their AI tool co-pilot to signal that we're still in charge and the AI is there to help us when we need it I've been using AI Tools in my photography business for a few years now from some amazing retouching plugins to helping me write marketing copy for my consumer facing website AI has been indispensable to my business it's allowed me to do more faster and better than I otherwise could do on my own in the past year tech companies have been developing AI models that do amazing things and some of them however at the same time as they've been achieving record profits have been expunging humans from their Workforce replacing them with AI even worse than that though are the companies that are marketing their AI tools with the suggestion of getting rid of not their Workforce but the workforce of an entire creative industry the commercial photography industry Adobe a leading software supplier for many creative industries from web development to graphic design to video production and stills photography recently used the words skip the photo shoot when marketing their generative AI software Adobe Firefly comments I've seen from the uninitiated are all along the lines of get over it or catch up or be replaced or AI is the future but what they fail to understand is that when a company chooses to skip the photo shoot it's not just one photographer who is affected it's an entire industry of people who are required to make an image at the caliber of a regional National or even a worldwide ad campaign that are out of work photographers producers models agents makeup artists wardrobe stylist food stylist set designers creative directors retouchers assistants Transportation equipment rental craft and catering services camera and lighting manufacturers their staff and employees and their suppliers and their employees it's not just one person being replaced it's an entire industry on the verge of being gutted just so some shareholders who contribute nothing of value and create nothing can earn an extra dollar on their dividends or increase their wealth on paper Adobe offering gen as a service for companies to build their own customized AI model so they can skip the photo shoot and forego hiring us alog together becomes even more agrees once you find out they've silently slipped the setting into Photoshop and our Creative Cloud accounts that give them consent to use our creative Works to train the very same machine learning models that threaten to render us obsolete I have a client who earlier this year sat in this very studio and told me what was happening to the industry I'm I'm not going to tell you their name or where they work but they are the global head of production for one of the top five media companies in the world a company with more than $2 billion in annual revenue and almost 10,000 employees I asked them how AI is changing their work and they said it's changing everything and they told me me two stories that clearly illustrate what's going on the first was about a major European automobile manufacturing company that is buying up the copyright on their advertising assets from the past 10 to 20 years so that they could build their own custom generative AI model in their brands distinct of style you know so they can skip the photo shoot the second is about a major athletic brand who slashed their advertising budget in half from the previous year and instructed this company to fill the gaps with AI and this isn't a small either this is a budgetary reduction in the tens of millions of dollars the final thing they said was that they only use Adobe Firefly because only Adobe offers indemnification from potential lawsuits in the commercial use of images and Adobe can do this because as I mentioned earlier you and I have likely been giving them permission to use our work without even knowing it this is the Line in the Sand for me this is the Rubicon when AI is no longer being touted as a tool to help us but as a tool to replace us to skip over us we're no longer the consumer we're the product and the kicker of it is we're paying a monthly subscription for the privilege of allowing it to happen to us AI is the biggest technological shift in our lifetime it's absolutely seismic there's no denying it it's a bigger shift than the internet the steam engine weaving looms and nuclear power combined it's being used everywhere from Healthcare to the battlefield in the same way we speak of gen Z as being the first generation to not know life before the internet the next generation will grow up not having an appreciation for life before artist artificial intelligence Pandora's Box has been opened but in this case I don't see a lot of hope so here's the conundrum for me I think AI tools are a great resource for people to have at their disposal AI will make life better for most people but it will also make life significantly worse for a lot of people I use AI in my personal life and my business to help me complete tasks that I'm completely incapable of not good at or even just save me time at tasks that I am very good at I'm a very good retoucher but because of the tools I use now retouching an image has gone from about an hour to about 5 minutes at the most the use of those tools is saving me time and not putting anyone else out of the work because I've always done my own retouching where and when I can pay a human to do work that they are experts at that is my preference and I think it should be everybody's preference AI on the other hand allows me to produce images music and words that I otherwise could not create myself could not create in a timely manner or at volume or could not otherwise afford to hire someone to create for me and I use those two words intentionally produce and create when I produce an image using AI I'm not creating it the machine's creating it I may have created the idea but I not create the work I produced it in the same way a producer on a photo shoot does not create the work but they are the person responsible for making it all come together I also don't believe that creative output should be gept or limited only to people with a specific set of skills if there's a creative idea that you have in your head I believe it serves Humanity better for that idea to come to fruition than for it it to die in your mind because you can't draw I'm not going to get into an Ethics or copyright debate in this video or in the comments but I would love to hear how AI is or is not affecting your work your budgets and your future are you concerned I'm currently in the process of making more videos related to Ai and my creative Endeavors including an in-depth video of all the AI tools I use in my business if that sounds like the kind of thing that you're interested in subscribe to this Channel and turn on the notifications so you get alerted when those are released [Music]