Photography in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Whither “photography” in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)? The medium has experienced many identity crises since the 1830s, but the current one may be its most urgent. Increasingly, AI can produce images that convincingly mimic the look of photographs and trade on photographic credibility—inducing fears of deepfake deceptions, challenging what constitutes photographic labor and artistry, provoking accusations of copyright and privacy violation in the training sets used for machine learning, and opening both exciting and troubling frontiers in human-technology collaboration. But most existentially, AI throws open the question: what is (now) a photograph?

This session invites scholars and artists to contemplate the status and identity of photography as we enter the era of ubiquitous artificial intelligence. Questions may include: How should we understand AI-generated images that look like, and are received as, camera-made photographs? Ought we to police a boundary between photography and AI, or revise photography’s ontology to encompass AI? Which methodological tools, philosophical debates, or case studies from the history of photography can aid us in navigating this new landscape? Is our field missing historical accounts that would aid analysis—for example, of the digital turn that made AI possible? What concepts might we draw from contemporary art, media studies, and other fields to theorize the desires, possibilities, and dangers attending photographic AI? How do AI algorithms reinscribe—or subvert—cultural biases already established by, or in, photographs? What forms might a critical artistic/photographic practice take now, vis-a-vis AI’s social, ethical, and artistic implications?