I have been reading a lot about AI recently. Not just news articles but serious journal articles written by those building its future. I have also been listening to a lot of interviews with those leading the companies at the forefront of this technology. The reason is that I like to try and see the big picture.

My reading and listening points to seismic change in the fields of science, engineering and manufacture. In effect AI could be considered as the steam engine of the Twenty First Century powering economic and social change. How this will be implemented and the impacts it will have are still being discussed and meditated by the very companies responsible for the progress whilst governments and politicians get left behind too concerned with old ways to understand the potential future for us all.

I find this fascinating. In the UK the government has been focused on funding education through their STEM initiative on science, technology, engineering and maths to the detriment of the creative industries. Yet, these are the very areas which it seems will be most impacted by the continuation of the AI revolution.

AI is already with us and what most people consider to be AI is referred to by those who are working on its future as ‘Junk Food AI’. This is the AI that most people engage with either knowingly or unknowingly. Text prompts and audio transcription, image manipulation and photo filters on your phone and on your computer. Quick fixes that might make simple tasks simpler or possible but in the world of AI these are merely stepping stones on a journey that leads to much bigger functionality.

That functionality will change the way in which research and production takes place, but it cannot replace creativity. It cannot replace the maverick mind, the tangential thinker, the visual storyteller. That is the future for photographers and photography.

There is no doubt that creatives will see the possibilities of AI within their practice but I believe that this is in addition to traditional photography not a replacement. It may also be the case that visual storytellers will see opportunities to work within AI writing prompts for visual narrative outputs such as storyboarding.

I don’t believe that AI will replace photography but exist alongside it. It may also recognize the essential transferable skills photographic practitioners could offer. The future for creatives in this new environment could be positive. However, this will require some new thinking from those engaged with the medium and those who are not that will have to get with the new programme. In short a new respect for creatives and photographers within the creative industries.

Politicians need to recognize the importance of the photographic image in global communication, economically and socially. They need to fund its study and see its relevance to economic growth and photographers need to be active in making this happen. That is perhaps the biggest challenge for photographers. To see themselves as something more than the creators of images that exist on social media, in photo albums, photo books and gallery walls. This is a common perception but it is no longer accurate.

Jobs will be lost but new ones will evolve. That is the nature of things. I believe that these will be focused on personal experience, something that AI can only replicate not create. True photography should be based on personal experience, passions and interests born of a life lived. That is invaluable in the new environment/economy.

I am no expert on AI but I am an observer of change. I am open to the evolution of practice, I have had to be over the last forty years that I have been involved with the professional creative industries. I may have preferred the old ways but I wasn’t given the choice of clinging to out dated ways of working if I wanted to remain employed. I dont see that as a bad thing.

I wrote this article on my phone and throughout the process words were suggested through text prediction. Sometimes they were right and sometimes they weren’t, but I was always in control. AI can suggest creative choices but it can’t control them.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building. Seven magazines. Sixty Years of Stories is on sale now.

© Grant Scott 2025