We’re certainly at an interesting time in tech. AI is advancing rapidly and in parallel is dividing people on how AI fits into our lives, if at all. On one hand, there are people who believe that we should wholeheartedly embrace this new technology, even in some cases believing that AI should take over all tasks, creative or otherwise. On the other side of the divide, there are those that believe that any use of AI is unacceptable, and the technology should be banned and return to the darkness from which it emerged (and the AI companies should meet the same fate).
I’m biased, of course, since I’ve been working in big tech for the past few years and I’ve been working on AI problems (focusing on preventing abuse) for almost as long. While I don’t pretend to have the right answers, I believe AI presents a powerful opportunity for humans, and there’s a middle ground where AI can help not only advance science, health, and technology, but also unlock new forms of human creativity and expression, along with giving even more people the ability to express themselves and focus on what makes us human.
I’d like to walk you through one way that I’m working with Claude (Anthropic’s AI) to accelerate my own expression and creativity through the medium of photography, and along the way I hope to show you why I believe that humans and AI can comfortably coexist, especially in artistic endeavors.
Disclaimer: I’m required to mention that this article is my own opinion and doesn’t reflect the opinions of my past or present employers
In the beginning, there was film
Discuss how I’ve been trying to use film emulation as a shortcut for editing photos - film presets bring a set of opinions with them that are easy to leverage to create a cohesive look while avoiding an overly “edited” look. Over time though I found myself bumping into the limits of the presets, and I wasn’t really using them the way I wanted to. I figured there could be something better.
From first principles
Talk about how I wanted to see if we could do a better job at emulating film by working on trying to recreate the physics and chemistry of it. Partnered with Claude to build film emulation first, and then workflow management second. Discuss creating limitations to my photo editing grounded in analog film photography, and how that has helped me already start taking more pictures, maintain a good “look,” and avoid stylized images.
Claude as a partner, not a replacement
Pitch how I believe AI (Claude) can coexist with humans. Automate the mundane, push the boundaries of creativity, and build bespoke tools to help people express what they have always wanted but perhaps couldn’t afford or didn’t know how.