Hey guys, Andy here. I recently saw a post extolling the virtues of AI in regards to the cost of a head shot and how they had bought themselves a steak dinner with the price difference. This got me thinking.
AI is a very generic term, so for clarification, and for the sake of this post, when I speak of AI, I mean a photographic headshot AI service. And by steak dinner I mean a pub steak dinner, with a glass of red, not a Goodman level steak dinner.
I think, today, right now, that a portrait is an essential part your professional offering, and given how universal access is to a camera there are few excuses as to why you would be unable to show a photo of yourself online. Additionally there is a strong rationale as to why portraits and headshots have adorned magazine covers and why they have been attached to CVs for decades; ie when possible potential clients and employers want to see the face of the person they are hiring. A steak dinner on the other hand? Whilst I appreciate a good meal out, eating out is something I regard as a luxury, which makes the premise of the comparison rather odd; comparing an essential to a luxury. However let’s go with it for the sake of this post.
As a portraitist, with years of experience, I am not interested in competing on price vs AI. I take great pride in what I do and bring award winning quality and nuance to my work. If a client prefers not to recognise this, or believe it to be unimportant, and go for a cheap option, then that is up to them.
However I appreciate for most of us price and cost are daily issues, that most people cannot afford everything they want and that there are opportunity costs to decisions in life. If you believe a steak dinner is better value than a headshot, taken by a person, promoting yourself and your services on LinkedIn, on social media, then that is your choice.
That said, before you use AI and book yourself that dinner, bear in mind the following; at the risk of stating the obvious, a dinner lasts as long as a dinner lasts. On the other hand, how long will you use a portrait to promote your business; a year? Two years? Five? Both in terms of duration and also opportunity cost, that is dinner tonight compared to years of promotion and publicity in order to earn work (maybe for steak dinners). I am reminded of the economic argument, often made in regards to shoes, that buying something cheap annually is more expensive over time than buying a quality, and pricier, item once.
It is also worth bearing in mind that you cannot copyright products manufactured by AI; not only are the selfies you input as training data now being used as additional training data by the service you have used, should anyone use ‘your’ headshot for their own purposes, there would be no legal recourse against it.
And, to be clear, AI, as a pattern recognising algorithm, can only produce something based on information it has been fed. A headshot is a close crop portrait, usually with a plain background, where every detail is scrutinised, and where there are no distracting elements; it is solely you. As a photographer I try ensure all these details are as accurate and perfect as possible; head tilt, balance, expression, angle, etc… When using AI how accurate are these training details? Are you an award winning selfie taker and are you taking all these elements into account when you’re feeding the selfies into the AI? I doubt it; laypeople are not professional photographers and thus don’t have the experience and expertise to know or recognise these things; you’re relying on a machine to get these things correct based off potentially inaccurate training data. The smile in that selfie; was it a genuine smile or a face you put on for the camera? Oh, you did not smile in the selfie you uploaded; so whose smile is on your AI face? Who does that smile, or expression, actually belong to?
I am of the mind and age that I want my decisions to reflect my values when and where possible. So the idea of offering my likeness to be used as training data, having signed my privacy away, with no legal recourse if someone else uses my headshot, using someone else’s facial expression, relying on an algorithmic service created by tech bros as opposed to engaging with a skilled individual, because I’d like a steak dinner tonight and accept a machine product that is ‘good enough’ and cheap (let alone the environmental costs); well, that’s up to you.
