I think the consensus is, and always has been on this forum, that AI-gen imagery is not photography. However, as I've said several times already, this is not the question at hand. With all due respect
@MurrayMinchin and others who continue to debate this issue - I believe it's a waste of time. Nobody here disagrees with you. We don't have to establish that 'promptography' (hah!) is not photography. We already did that.
On a sidenote - no,
@cirwin2010, chemigrams do not involve light. So we do have a precedent (albeit a very marginal one) in something other than photography being included integrally in the scope of this forum.
The assumption is apparently that Photrio is focused exclusively on photography as we know it, and that this scope is constant. The question at hand is whether we
want that scope to be static, or whether we want to allow it to follow (to an extent) the developments in the real world. I notice a couple of arguments against this - arguments that have underlying sentiments, expectations and concerns that to a large extent I share. I would like to comment on a few of these.
In doing so, I want to emphasize that there's no concrete plan or proposal towards expanding the inclusion of AI in the forum as it is now. There is the subforum that
@Sean already linked to. That's all we've got for now. A loose idea would be to have a similar thing in the Gallery where we could perhaps create a sub-Gallery specifically for AI-gen content, with that content not appearing in de sidebar etc. That's all we have in terms of a proposal - which is basically nothing. There's no proposal, no plan, no 'new deal'. At this point, all we have is an open discussion.
I notice that there's a stream of thought rising that the idea to "do something with AI" somehow traces to a desire for 'maximum engagement' (
@retina_restoration, earlier also expressed by
@Alan Johnson). I want to be very clear on this: the fact that we bring up this question is 100% responsive to what we see happening on the forum. The very recent trigger was the upload of some AI-gen images to the gallery. We have also seen previous threads with lengthy discussion on AI. Apparently there's an interest in AI - albeit that this interest is for many not necessarily a
keen one. The tricky bit for us is to figure out to what extent within the present Photrio demographic there is a desire to discuss/view/create AI-gen content.
Gauging this potential interest is apparently tricky in itself because of the deep concerns among some of our participants. There's one concern I'd like to address:
"AI will flood the forum" or "corrupt the essence of the meaning of the forum" (
@Taylor Nankervis on the latter quote).
I really don't think so for a couple of reasons:
1: We're not going to allow it under any circumstance. Everyone here recognizes the value of the in-depth discussion on Photrio, and nobody in their right mind would want to somehow harm that. So if we're going to put the door ajar to AI-gen content, it will remain limited to designated places in the forum and included in such a way that forum users can ignore it (e.g. by ignoring a subforum about AI and/or by deselecting specific tags).
2: This extends to our demographic. If we allow some form of AI-talk, this doesn't automatically mean Photrio will become a supermagnet for AI-afficionados. Looking at new registrations in the present day, we see mostly people joining us with an interest in (also) analog photography. Why? Because that's where we have critical mass. That balance is not going to flip overnight. Communities just don't work that way. They grow organically.
3: Given the scope of most of our sub-forums, it just doesn't invite any AI-gen content. If you have a thread on let's say how to best develop TMAX100, there's just no sensible reason to start ditching AI images into that thread. It turns out that people just don't do that. They don't start talking about the best recipe for chili all of a sudden. They don't start dumping AI images into a thread all of a sudden.
4: Conversely, if you make a dedicated place for AI-gen content, this acts as a shunt for whatever tendency/need/desire to discuss/show that sort of content. If any AI-gen content ends up in a non-AI place, we can always move it. Moving something is also generally appreciated more by the person who posted something than seeing their stuff deleted outright.
Overall, I think if we include AI in the scope of the forum, it will be much like how we deal with digital. It'll be a limited component, there will be some opportunity for people to play with it on the forum, and for those who don't want to be involved in it, it'll mostly remain hidden.
For now, we see a very vocal subset of the population voice their concerns. It's not clear whether that sentiment is representative of the majority, and whether we should even focus on a majority to begin with in any decision-making that
may follow. The alt. printing crowd is a small subset of the population and we cater to them as well. This seems to work without being detrimental to other parts of the forum. We could do the same with AI.
Finally, I'd like to observe that the AI subforum that
@Sean mentions has been around for something like a month now. People haven't even noticed. Nobody filed a report. Nobody cried wolf when it was created. Apparently, it can co-exist quite peacefully with the rest of it.