Sam Altman, Former Open AI CEO Makes Many Furious With His Ridiculous Take on Photography

In a recent YouTube interview with Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, journalist Cleo Abram asks if he’s seen the bunnies jumping on the trampoline video, which Abram notes, has gone “incredibly viral.” She then says that for many people, it’s perhaps “the first time people saw a video, enjoyed it, and then later found out that it was completely AI-generated….”

She then asks him, in the future, “How do we figure out what's real and what's not real?”

He starts by saying, “But my sense is what's going to happen is it's just going to like gradually converge." Meaning, photography and AI-generated images (or video and AI-generated videos) will continue to converge. "You know, even like a photo you take out of your iPhone today, it's like mostly real, but it's a little not.” He ends by saying, “And I think that the threshold for how real does it have to be to consider to be real will just keep moving.”

Some photography experts have had issues with what Altman says, and I get their frustration. Andy Day, on FStoppers, wrote, “…OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that photos and AI-generated imagery will converge. Given that his intellect receives so much acclaim, it’s alarming that he has no understanding of photography and its function within society, not to mention the far-reaching implications.”

Allison Johnson of The Verge wrote, “I’m annoyed, not for the first time, by something Sam Altman has said. But this time it’s because I’m annoyed at how much I agree with what he’s saying — even though I think his statement is kind of bullshit.”

Like Johnson, I agree with what Altman says, and that it’s also kind of bullshit, as well. But what irks me is the casually vague manner he discusses the issue. And like the bunnies, he seems to hop around in providing his examples and answers.

 

 

But let’s face it: Photography has had a long, contentious relationship with representing reality. Photographers and average viewers have long looked to film photography as the truth. In the book On Photography, by Susan Sontag, Edward Weston is quoted as saying, “Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium…”

So, as the Edward Weston quote suggests, the notion of photography and its ability to present the truth has always been closely linked. In her 1978 book, “On Photography,” Susan Sontag wrote about many aspects of how we perceive photographs and how that affects our perception of how we view ourselves and the world around us. Early in the book, she writes about notions of photography’s truthfulness: “Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it….” In other words, for most of the history of photography, it seems we’ve regarded certain genres, like photojournalism, as being able to portray reality with an element of truth.

But did it always mean that photographs were truthful? Or represented the truth?

What’s interesting to note is that if you look back through the history of photography and the more recent evolution into digital photography, you’ll see that this is not a new problem. In the era of analog photography, from the 1820s through the late 1990s, there are several instances where the “photo as evidence” quality becomes problematic: For instance, in Beaumont Newhall’s The History of Photography, Henry Peach Robinson, in 1858, first achieved notoriety when he created the photograph, “Fading Away,” which the book notes was actually a “combination print showing a dying girl attended by grief-stricken parents.” It was a composite black-and-white photograph made from 5 different negatives. So, in effect, Robinson was producing composites 150 years before the first iPhone or smartphone was. But what’s fascinating is the public’s response to the Robinson's photograph. According to Newhall, “The public was shocked by the subject; it was felt to be poor taste to represent so painful a scene.” Newhall continues, “But the very fact it was a photograph implied that it was a truthful presentation, and so the scene was viewed literally.”

 

 

There are other examples of purposely doctored or altered photos. The book, The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia” by David King, reveals how, during his rule in communist Russia, Joseph Stalin would have photographers use various techniques to “remove” people (who had fallen out of favor with the dictator) from photos. Both of these examples were during the era of analog or film photography (from the 1820s through the late 1990s), which made it far more difficult to edit images.

But what I’d be interested in knowing is the viewer’s response to those partially fictional group portraits. Did they feel conned or duped? And I think the element of being fooled or tricked when looking at a photograph or video is something Altman seems to avoid answering, along with other problems, like, in a world where AI and photography converge, how can we ever use photos in a legal matter if photographic truth is subjective? And what about your passport photos? Or even your wedding photos? Should anyone believe they represent you?

In the future, will it truly be a desert of the real, where everything is simulated? It’s impossible to know, but it’s worth having a longer discussion than the one Altman and Abram had. And we should have it sooner rather than later.