A couple of years ago, I signed up for a trial to use an AI photo generator.  I was curious to see what kind of reference photos I could create with it.  I thought it might be a good tool for generating reference photos of subjects I don’t regularly have access to, in order to take my own reference photos.  I decided to start with traditional fox-hunt scenes.  Oh my.  The photos created were comically ridiculous and completely wrong.  Wrong in strange ways that would never work as a photo reference.  I canceled the trial membership and set that idea aside.

A few months ago, though, I learned that I had a subscription to Google’s AI program, Gemini, through my Google Drive & Storage membership.  I know AI has come a long way in a couple of years, and it might be worth revisiting, especially since it’s free.  I wouldn’t use it to generate photos from scratch, but to improve photos that were deteriorated or low quality, or to make adjustments beyond my photo editing capabilities.  It’s pretty common that commission clients ask me to remove a dog’s harness with my paintbrush. I’m also often asked to combine two pet photos into a dual portrait.  I know it can be almost impossible to get two dogs to pose perfectly together.

I started with simple tasks like removing a harness or bringing clarity to a pre-digital-age photo.  Then I used it to adjust the lighting, transforming yellowed indoor light into clean, natural light.  After a few successful outcomes, I started utilizing it more.

This client asked if I could put her other dog into the photo below…

So, I fed both photos into Gemini, along with details of where I envisioned the second dog…

…and I got a photo that was pretty convincing.  It was certainly good enough to use as a reference, so I sent it along to the client to make sure the size of the dogs was true to life, and she was happy with the composition.

Here is the final painting…

In the past, I would’ve printed up photos, adjusted their size until they felt right, cut out the second dog, and taped everything in place.  It worked, but it was a cumbersome process.

I’ve also used it for some of the photos I took in the Cotswolds.  Many of the animal photos I took were taken on a cloudy day, so the light is a little flat.  I used photo editing to make the lighting a bit more dramatic, but I can’t get the drama that comes from the highlights and shadows naturally cast on a sunny day.

So, I fed the photo into AI and asked it to create a stronger natural light source…

Now I had darker shadows and more interesting highlights to get my artistic teeth into.

Even though I have found AI much more useful and helpful than I did a couple of years ago, I still have mixed feelings about it.  It makes me sad to see art prints being sold without a human artist behind them, especially when that fact is obscured from the buyer.  While some AI-generated interior photos are gorgeous, I have mixed feelings about liking a room that isn’t real.  Even places brought to life from imagination in books, film, theme parks, etc., still have human ingenuity, engineering, and artistry behind them.

I have a feeling my opinion of AI and the way it’s used will waffle as it becomes more and more a part of our daily lives, but this is where I’ve landed on the issue.  I want to use it as a tool that helps creative work.  I don’t want to use it in any way that replaces creative work, mine or anyone else’s.  To me, that’s when it crosses a line, and I’m no longer interested in interacting with it.