A Further Discussion around AI and Creativity.

I’m a member of Maidenhead Camera Club, and the subject of AI assistance is often rumbling along.

I found a recent post and article by Roger Norton very interesting.

He said:
A short while ago, I hosted a zoom chat on AI in photography. I have developed my talk further and it has been published in the PABG Newsletter (June 1st). I urge you to read it but warn that you may not like everything I have reported! See page 6

https://www.pagbnews.co.uk/…/newsl…/en406%201%20June.pdf

I read your article with great interest; the topic of AI assistance is both fascinating and, at times, divisive. Photography has always evolved alongside advances in technology. We began with simple camera obscuras, light-sensitive paper, and silver nitrate, then moved to glass plates, film, and chemical processing—followed by scanning, fully digital capture, and sophisticated post-production. Even Photoshop, which started as a basic editing tool, now includes extensive AI-powered features. In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to work on an image without some form of AI involvement, whether we realise it or not—whether we are working with our own captured pixels or using generated content. To me, this feels like a natural evolution of the medium.

Your article concludes with the powerful statement:“As photographers, we must decide whether we are creating images that interpret reality or images that invent it.”

I would argue that photography has been doing both since its very beginning. Looking at the kind of work seen in competitions today, most are interpretations of reality—and some quite clearly construct a reality that exists only within the digital workflow. Whether AI is used in their creation or not, my view is this: as long as the original or base image is captured by the photographer, under their control, the final work should be judged on its own merits, alongside all other entries. As with any creative medium, there is an enormous range of approaches, processes, and treatments, leading to an almost infinite variety of possible outcomes.

To draw a parallel: AI has also transformed writing. I notice your article uses em dashes—something many people never use naturally, but which AI tools often favour, as they are trained on vast amounts of text and tend to follow formal grammar conventions more consistently than many human writers. The em dash itself is a legitimate punctuation mark, yet it has recently become unfairly associated with AI.
This raises an interesting question: how confident can we be that a piece of writing is entirely the author’s own, and not an AI-assisted interpretation of their original thoughts? If it were entered into a writing competition, would it be disqualified because tools were used to refine it? Spell-checkers and grammar checkers have long been accepted—so why should tools that suggest clearer phrasing or stronger word choice be treated differently?

From what I see in forums and groups, AI is often met with fierce opposition from certain quarters. Much of this reaction seems to stem from a lack of understanding, limited experience, or a rigid belief that using computerised tools is inherently wrong. For many, the line is drawn as a simple binary: if you use AI, you are “cheating” or doing something wrong. But this attitude feels like a refusal to adapt—similar to how scribes may have felt about the printing press, or how early photographers felt about flexible film.

I use AI assistance extensively myself. I cannot afford a professional editor for long-form writing, so I use AI to get perspectives, suggestions, and advice. Crucially, it never writes the content for me; I very rarely copy and paste its output directly. If I cannot improve on what it suggests, I do not use it. It is a tool, not a replacement for my own ideas.
Returning to photography: just as digital technology replaced the darkroom, AI will become a major part of creative imaging. As long as there are photographers and cameras, there will be ideas to express, scenes to compose, and art to create. Try editing a RAW file without modern software, or limiting yourself only to what can be achieved entirely in-camera—you quickly see how much we already rely on tools to bring our vision to life.

We can look to history for perspective: were cave painters upset when paper was invented? Did the craft disappear when the printing press arrived? Did horses feel replaced by cars? I could build a house using only hand tools—it would take a very long time, and the result might not be great. But with good power tools, I can produce something far better, faster, and more accurately. The skill and vision remain mine; the tools simply help me realise them.
This is how I see the future of photography: it begins with the human mind that perceives an idea, the eye that frames the scene, and the hand that presses the shutter. Technology—including AI—simply helps turn that original vision into the image the photographer imagined before the shutter was even released.

Disclaimer: This article is 100% AI-assisted. My ideas, thoughts and feelings, AI assisted to make it readable and coherent and not a jumbled mismatch of ideas and awkward sentences, appalling spelling and terrible punctuation.