I guess in a word I would say disappointing. This rabbit warren goes deep however. I’m not in the business of commercial sales. That’s not to say I don’t sell my photography - I do. If I had a fully-fledged business outlet and I depended on sales for income I would feel short changed by the AI revolution. Why? Because AI based products can be produced and sold cheaply. You can buy a landscape image from IKEA for next to nothing. It’s called Decor. If AI can approximate a photographic work and doesn’t cost the earth - it will do. If you’re an art lover it’s a different matter.

But in terms of photo retouching which is almost as old as photography itself there are benefits for all photographers. The vast amount of my photography was done pre-AI. You can of course apply AI functionality retrospectively. But I’m pretty happy with what I have in terms of image processing. I don’t feel the need to go back and ‘re-do’ my images. The real benefit for me in all this advancement is the time saving element in post-processing I have to do anyway.

There’s not much in the photographic world though that hasn’t been retouched in some way. Even in the conversion process from colour to B&W there have been advances in ways that have made that easier. I’m all for that. After all I don’t have a darkroom now and don’t have any desire to work with chemicals. So, digital it is. You have to find your own comfort level with it. AI has crept up on us in increments. We barely notice or can discriminate it any more. It’s used extensively in just about every piece of media we consume. You can still seek out original work though, which has relied for maybe 90% on the skill of the artist. I haven’t conducted a survey myself so I wouldn’t know if most consumers even care. I still enjoy the creative process - the travel, image taking, even a little post.