Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the things that photographers love to bitch about. I certainly love to bitch about it. It doesn’t help that I have legit seen AI put a couple of my friends directly out of work, which sucks for them. I wonder how long it will take to come after my own portion of the insurance industry (broker). I have already seen it laying waste to underwriting.
On the flip side, I don’t complain when AI is useful. The image above benefitted from AI noise reduction and sharpening. I was using a camera with AI trained autofocus for eye tracking this past Friday evening. AI is damn handy sometimes for photographers.
Yes, we worry about it taking away our sales. Except… Sales were already in the crapper before AI generated content was a thing. We went from making money on image licensing to having to upload to microstock companies and then making nothing from them. Photographers were already screwed when AI appeared and now it is busy screwing Getty Images, although I’m sure those cockroaches will find a way to survive.
Anyhow, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have a Plan B, or a side hustle if AI somehow manages to automate my part of the insurance industry. A side-hustle based on photography, of course, because that is what I know. And photography that doesn’t involve brides in any manner because brides are one big bucket of suck*. I thought why not bounce some ideas off of ChatGPT?
I did.
Following this I got some incredibly useful feedback that has already identifed costly routes I don’t want to go down, things I hadn’t thought of that I can try to become more marketable and appealing, expensive equipment I don’t need, how to leverage the equipment I have in new ways, and expenses I can write off in Canada that I didn’t know I could. I’m feeling a bit of chagrin that a technology that I thought would be the death of any sort of professional photography for me could help me design a new business producing passive income in a way that I would actually enjoy.
I guess it pays to be open minded and to actually engage with new tech rather than just turning your back on it and refusing to give it a fair shake. It can surprise you. It suprised me, and I’m kind of excited about some things I can try over the next week or so to prove out my new plan. Yay for AI the job creator?
DJI Mini 3 drone image. Stitched in Photoshop. Enhanced using Topaz DeNoise AI. *Note to past, present, and future brides… You are each and every one a beautiful grasshopper, except on your wedding day. On that day you are a locust.
