Why This Feels Different
Did AI write “AI?” on the whiteboard? Actually, the question is did AI generate an image of a whiteboard with the phrase, “AI?” written on it?
I've been using AI more lately. Had Claude help me write a blog post about getting back to creative work. It organized thoughts I'd been wrestling with for years, synthesized insights from a decade of my own writing, and presented it all in a way that felt both authentic and polished.
The result was better than anything I could have written myself, at least in terms of structure and flow. And that got me thinking about whether AI would eventually do this for everything. My photography, my creative decisions, all of it.
Tell me if this thought hasn't crossed your mind. What happens when machines can create things that are indistinguishable from human work?
It's the same conversation we've had before with other technologies. When photography was invented, painters worried it would kill painting. When digital cameras replaced film, photographers mourned the loss of the darkroom process. When Photoshop made image manipulation accessible to everyone, purists argued that "real" photography was dead.
But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if this time actually is different.
Why This Actually Feels Different
Here's the thing about previous technological shifts. A camera was still a tool that required a human to point it, choose the moment, decide what was worth capturing. Photoshop required someone to make creative decisions about how to manipulate an image. Even when synthesizers arrived, musicians still had to compose, arrange, perform.
But AI seems to create things out of whole cloth. You give it a prompt, and it generates a complete image, essay, or song. No human craft involved in the actual creation process.
Except that's not quite true, is it? AI doesn't create from nothing. It's trained on millions of existing works—paintings, photographs, articles, songs. In a very real sense, it's remixing everything that came before it, just at a scale and speed that makes the borrowing invisible.
So maybe the question isn't whether AI creates independently, but whether that kind of synthesis is fundamentally different from what human creators have always done. We all build on what came before us. We all remix influences in ways that feel original to us.
The difference is scale and attribution. When I'm influenced by a photographer's work, there's usually some acknowledgment, some visible lineage. When AI generates an image, it's drawing from thousands of sources in ways that can't be traced back or credited.
The Uncomfortable Questions
This raises questions that previous technological shifts didn't really face. When a camera replaced a portrait painter's livelihood, at least the photographer still had to learn composition, lighting, timing. When digital tools made traditional darkroom skills obsolete, photographers still needed to develop an eye for capturing compelling moments.
But what skills does AI preserve? What role is left for the human in the creative process?
Maybe it's curation. Deciding what's worth making, what questions are worth asking, what perspectives are missing from the conversation. Maybe it's iteration—working with AI through multiple rounds to get closer to a specific vision.
Or maybe we're kidding ourselves, and this really is fundamentally different from every previous shift.
What I Keep Coming Back To
When I post a photo from my MegaLens setup at Seal Beach Pier, the value isn't just in the technical execution. It's in my decision to be there at that moment, to notice something worth capturing, to frame it in a way that reflects how I see the world.
AI might be able to generate technically superior images, but it can't decide that Tuesday evening light at the pier matters to me. It can't bring my specific history, my emotional associations with that place, my particular way of noticing things.
But then again, does that matter if the end result is an image that moves people? If no one can tell the difference between human-created and AI-generated content, does the process behind it actually matter?
I honestly don't know.
Still Working It Out
I'm still experimenting with when and how to use AI tools in my work. Sometimes it feels like collaboration, sometimes like cheating. Most of the time it just feels like I'm trying to figure out what creativity means when the technical barriers keep getting lower.
Maybe this technological shift really is like the ones before it, and human creativity will adapt and find new ways to matter. Maybe the people worried about being replaced are right to be concerned. Maybe both things can be true at the same time.
What I do know is that the conversation is worth having, even if—especially if—we don't have clear answers yet.
How are you thinking about AI and creative work? I'm genuinely curious what other people are experiencing as they navigate this stuff.
