If I was a photographer I’d be royally pissed off that yet another job was being slurped into the gaping swiss-army-jawed maw of generative AI. 

Oh wait. I am a photographer.

Or… I was. 

Reset. I am referencing an advert that played out in front of a video I was watching earlier, encouraging job applicants looking for that creamy and professional headshot for their resume—I kid you not—to upload a shit-faced party pic from a hard night out and let the chatbot work its magic.

What are we doing here?

Killing a job and refactoring reality at the same time, I suppose.

This blog could so easily—too easily—turn into a gripe-athon. I could, every day, call out yet another fist-shaking-in-air observation from the creep of algorithms into the creative realm.

“The bots are taking our jobs.” I could shout, and undoubtably find endless examples of the same. And, honestly, there will be days that I revert to that: I need to. I must, after all, point out and observe that the slaughter is happening, huh?

It won’t be everyday, tho.

My mantra is more that “the bots are taking our souls” and that, as much as we all feel it, is much more of a nuanced argument to make. It begs understanding of a kind that is as different as—well, as different as a drunken party selfie and a professional headshot.