Video: The Dark Side of AI: Is the Photography Industry Doomed?

Franklee · Jan 1, 2026

I'm more concerned about the inevitable bubble bursting and taking out tons of retirement funds and personal wealth, if not our entire economic and government systems. Or a solar flare comparable to the one in the 19th Century that destroyed the telegraphs.

Watch the Super Bowl next month and half the $$$ will be done using Ai tools requiring less travel, expense, time and support staff. Art directors and copy writers will merge into "creatives" much in the same way everyone is calling themselves "creative directors". So for the elite, young, talented 10% they may do very well for a while. Everyone else will be "management" or unemployed.

Count the number of creative people over 40 working at major ad agencies... outside of partner-owner status it's zilch. So even those kids taking the jobs are going to be selling real estate or on UBI in a decade.

Same idea as developing websites from scratch versus using Square Space. It's impossible to be competitive building small business websites from scratch these days. Are you going to drop $50k on your photography website when a customizable template is nearly free? Creative website design went from being a gold mine to drudgery in less than twenty years.

As the boomers die off the entire television and print industry will collapse and most of the ad money will dry up. They'll spend it all on placements and social media influencers as internet ads are pretty worthless as they are already.

Analog photography will still be a great hobby, like ham radio and stamp collecting ;-p In fact doing B&W circa 1925 maybe the only option if the economy collapses and complex manufacturing capabilities are lost.

Buy and hold junk silver under the bed.

Cholentpot · Jan 1, 2026

Franklee said:
I'm more concerned about the inevitable bubble bursting and taking out tons of retirement funds and personal wealth, if not our entire economic and government systems. Or a solar flare comparable to the one in the 19th Century that destroyed the telegraphs.

Watch the Super Bowl next month and half the $$$ will be done using Ai tools requiring less travel, expense, time and support staff. Art directors and copy writers will merge into "creatives" much in the same way everyone is calling themselves "creative directors". So for the elite, young, talented 10% they may do very well for a while. Everyone else will be "management" or unemployed.

Count the number of creative people over 40 working at major ad agencies... outside of partner-owner status it's zilch. So even those kids taking the jobs are going to be selling real estate or on UBI in a decade.

Same idea as developing websites from scratch versus using Square Space. It's impossible to be competitive building small business websites from scratch these days. Are you going to drop $50k on your photography website when a customizable template is nearly free? Creative website design went from being a gold mine to drudgery in less than twenty years.

As the boomers die off the entire television and print industry will collapse and most of the ad money will dry up. They'll spend it all on placements and social media influencers as internet ads are pretty worthless as they are already.

Analog photography will still be a great hobby, like ham radio and stamp collecting ;-p In fact doing B&W circa 1925 maybe the only option if the economy collapses and complex manufacturing capabilities are lost.

Buy and hold junk silver under the bed.

Solar flare is no joke. There are only a handful of countries shielded. Ironically places like North Korea would do fine as they're still working with 1940's tech.

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 1, 2026

MattKing said:
FWIW, the rules do differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
And like as not, anyone who tries to support a witnesses testimony with a cel phone video shared at reduced resolution probably did so because they/their offices/their staff screwed up.
That or because the equipment that the prosecution had available was supplied to fulfil out of date specifications, by the lowest bidder .
Even when I practiced, the private lawyers had more and more recent computer resources than the Crown Counsel's office!

The prosecutor knew. They played games. That's why the judge was so angry to the point he stated he was considering throwing out the case against the defendant. I don't recall now, but i believe he may have even held the prosecutor in contempt.

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 2, 2026

mshchem said:
Google and another firm are building new data centers in Cedar Rapids, part of town with huge plants that make Cheerios, ADM plant that makes enormous amounts of ethanol.

The data centers will pull as much power as some of these big plants. All to store your Nest home video, cell phone pictures and emails etc.

Bringing a 50 year old mothballed nuke plant back on line, these data centers take huge amounts of water. Google is drilling scores of deep wells to suck the aquifer dry.

Turn the resolution down on your cell cam. Save the whales!

AI chip power requirements will decrease substantially as innovation continuees just as old huge computer systems were replaced with a laptop or two.

MattKing · Jan 2, 2026

Alan Edward Klein said:
The prosecutor knew. They played games. That's why the judge was so angry to the point he stated he was considering throwing out the case against the defendant. I don't recall now, but i believe he may have even held the prosecutor in contempt.

If the Crown Counsel did that intentionally around here they would lose their careers, lose their privilege' of being able to practice law and most likely end up with a criminal conviction.
An individual "win" just isn't worth it - Crown Counsel are career courtroom lawyers, whether or not they stay there for their entire career or elect at some time in the future to leave and practice privately.

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 2, 2026

MattKing said:
If the Crown Counsel did that intentionally around here they would lose their careers, lose their privilege' of being able to practice law and most likely end up with a criminal conviction.
An individual "win" just isn't worth it - Crown Counsel are career courtroom lawyers, whether or not they stay there for their entire career or elect at some time in the future to leave and practice privately.

Here's another similar case where the defendant was found guilty and the prosecuter knew there was a better copy of the video available but withheld it during the trial. Unfortunately, in America, district attorneys and attorney generals often run for their office. And what happens when cases become very political and newsworthy, they tend to bend the rules to win important cases. Frankly, they should be thrown in jail for doing these things.

Google Search

mshchem · Jan 2, 2026

MattKing said:
If the Crown Counsel did that intentionally around here they would lose their careers, lose their privilege' of being able to practice law and most likely end up with a criminal conviction.
An individual "win" just isn't worth it - Crown Counsel are career courtroom lawyers, whether or not they stay there for their entire career or elect at some time in the future to leave and practice privately.

Go Canada!

Criminal lawyers in the US are often just that! Then they run for office, regardless of party affiliation!

koraks · Jan 2, 2026

wiltw said:
any departure from reality will not be acceptable to a potential buyer, you would be accused of fraudulent advertising.

Virtually all real estate photos today are a "departure from reality". It's like that juicy hamburger; we all know what the ad looks like and we all know how it's different from the object inside the paper box you receive at the counter. Sure, people complain, but they still buy the home with the fake lights, the fake furniture and the fake sky doctored into the ad photos instead of the one that's faithfully depicted.

Alan Edward Klein said:
AI chip power requirements will decrease substantially as innovation continuees just as old huge computer systems were replaced with a laptop or two.

Global power use for computing will continue to go UP (and likely exponentially at that), not down. Also, technically, your statement that "chip power requirements will decrease" is incorrect; they will likely increase. But what's more relevant is that the number of computing cells (reflected in cores inside chips and chips inside modules and modules inside larger systems) will continue to rise exponentially. Any gain in efficiency on the level of silicon will be entirely obliterated by the gigantic increase in the amount of silicon used. That's how it's been for the past 35 years or so and there's no end in sight for that development.

wiltw · Jan 2, 2026

koraks said:
Virtually all real estate photos today are a "departure from reality". It's like that juicy hamburger; we all know what the ad looks like and we all know how it's different from the object inside the paper box you receive at the counter. Sure, people complain, but they still buy the home with the fake lights, the fake furniture and the fake sky doctored into the ad photos instead of the one that's faithfully depicted.

The practice of 'staging' a home is well known practice, that furniture etc. in placed in lieu of emptiness, to give the impression of what it would look like while occupied.

To use AI to generate the fill of furnishings would be comparable to physical staging, to lure shoppers to come look. But if AI were used to insert a water feature in the yard, and elegant plantings and trees were placed, a broken chimney existed while the AI photo showed nice new brick, and when the yard was actually overgrown mess or bare and undeveloped would be an example that could occur if AI were given too much liberty.

'Fraud' very different from 'staging' standard practice. We all know AI can be used for good, and it can also exist for dark purposes.

koraks · Jan 2, 2026

@wiltw I understand what you're saying, but I think you draw the line in an arbitrary place. The slippery slope we have been on for decades already. AI makes it easier to glide down even faster, but all the "too much" examples you've mentioned aren't very different from what's already been done at a massive scale.

wiltw · Jan 2, 2026

koraks said:
@wiltw I understand what you're saying, but I think you draw the line in an arbitrary place. The slippery slope we have been on for decades already. AI makes it easier to glide down even faster, but all the "too much" examples you've mentioned aren't very different from what's already been done at a massive scale.

I do not disagree...merely pointing out that a slippery slope can be made worse with AI. After all, cracks in walls can be filled in for the short term with plaster and covered with paint fpr staging, but the fundamental structural flaw that created the crack still exists. AI 'fixing' chimney cracks and leaning?

koraks · Jan 2, 2026

It works very well for that.
The skying and bobsledding communities should embrace this tech.

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 2, 2026

koraks said:
Virtually all real estate photos today are a "departure from reality". It's like that juicy hamburger; we all know what the ad looks like and we all know how it's different from the object inside the paper box you receive at the counter. Sure, people complain, but they still buy the home with the fake lights, the fake furniture and the fake sky doctored into the ad photos instead of the one that's faithfully depicted.

Global power use for computing will continue to go UP (and likely exponentially at that), not down. Also, technically, your statement that "chip power requirements will decrease" is incorrect; they will likely increase. But what's more relevant is that the number of computing cells (reflected in cores inside chips and chips inside modules and modules inside larger systems) will continue to rise exponentially. Any gain in efficiency on the level of silicon will be entirely obliterated by the gigantic increase in the amount of silicon used. That's how it's been for the past 35 years or so and there's no end in sight for that development.

The point I was trying to make is that one AI processing plant's power requirements today will decrease substantially in time for an equal amount of processing. Sure, if there are another hundred plants added, and AI chips are everywhere, the overall power requirements for the country will increase just as computers in general have increased. No one had computers in the past except big companies. People had slide rules. So power for computers was limited to those big companies. Now practically everyone has a laptop, computer and cell phone. So even small amounts for each person adds up nationwide.

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 2, 2026

wiltw said:
The practice of 'staging' a home is well known practice, that furniture etc. in placed in lieu of emptiness, to give the impression of what it would look like while occupied.

To use AI to generate the fill of furnishings would be comparable to physical staging, to lure shoppers to come look. But if AI were used to insert a water feature in the yard, and elegant plantings and trees were placed, a broken chimney existed while the AI photo showed nice new brick, and when the yard was actually overgrown mess or bare and undeveloped would be an example that could occur if AI were given too much liberty.

'Fraud' very different from 'staging' standard practice. We all know AI can be used for good, and it can also exist for dark purposes.

koraks said:
@wiltw I understand what you're saying, but I think you draw the line in an arbitrary place. The slippery slope we have been on for decades already. AI makes it easier to glide down even faster, but all the "too much" examples you've mentioned aren't very different from what's already been done at a massive scale.

When my wife and I bought the house we now live in, I missed the cats the previous owner had although they were captured in a couple of his house pictures on the web. After we signed the contract, I noticed the cats and because I'm allergic to them, I had to hire a company that had to specially clean out the house including the air conditioning ducts and everything else, including replacing the carpets in some of the rooms with engineered wood floors. It cost thousands more than I expected and we had to rush the work over the weekened before we moved it. But he did have the cats in the pictures. My fault.

Video: The Dark Side of AI: Is the Photography Industry Doomed?

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