Artificial Intelligence vs Natural Intransigence

(with voice of a seasoned photographer, not a TikTok guru)

Every time I post an AI-generated or AI-assisted image, the usual comments pop up:

“That’s not real art.”
“That’s cheating.”
“The machine did it, not you.”

Let’s be brutally honest: there is nothing “wrong” with using AI.
The only real problem is not knowing how to use it,
or getting an image that is not what you meant to create and then blaming the tool.

Resistance to evolution is not new. It didn’t start with Midjourney, DALL·E, or Stable Diffusion.
It’s as old as we are.

Same story, different tool: tech changes, emotions complain

I’ve lived through a lot of these transitions, right in the front row:

From your mechanic friend with a finely tuned ear who could tell a “clank, clank” from a “tic, tic”
to the car plugged into a computer diagnostic.
From perfumed love letters written by hand
to emails.
From landline phones with a lock so nobody could call long distance
to smartphones with parental controls.
From rushing to return the VHS to the video club
to endless streaming on Smart TVs.
From recording our own music on cassettes
to carrying thousands of songs as MP3 files.
From the heavy Sunday newspaper
to digital subscriptions.
From meet & greet events
to social media.
From warm, post-dinner family table talks… to whatever we have now.

And of course, photography didn’t escape:

From film to digital.
From darkrooms to Photoshop.
From buying Photo CDs to using AI.

Every shift brought the same chorus:

“This kills what’s authentic.”
“Now anyone can do it.”
“Back then it was real.”

The uncomfortable truth: evolution is part of who we are.
If you were lucky enough to feel those transitions in your own body, let me tell you: you’re blessed.
You got to experience firsthand what newer generations only read about.

“Like tears in the rain”

Rutger Hauer, in that immortal Blade Runner monologue, nailed it:

“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.”

All those technological firsts, those fears, those “wow” moments… they fade.
But you and I know they were real. We lived them. They shaped us.

“Do you use AI?” — Yes. And not only recently.

When people ask me: “Are you using AI?”

My answer is simple: Of course I do.

I’ve been using “artificial intelligence” in a broader sense since 1994 with Photoshop 3.0,
creating digital art when many still insisted that if your hands didn’t smell like chemicals
and your fingers weren’t stained in the darkroom, it “wasn’t real photography”.

This part might hurt a bit, but it’s true:

I have never done a photoshoot on Mars.
I have never photographed a sexy four‑legged zebra lady posing in the forest.

Yet those images exist in my work. We call that compositing, photo‑manipulation, digital fantasy. And for 30 years, more than a dozen awards as a photographer and digital artist never made me think:

“I don’t need to learn anymore.”

So why, suddenly, is it a “sin” because the tool got more powerful?

The myth of purity: there was always intervention

Let’s kill a persistent myth:
The pure, untouched, intervention‑free image never existed.

In the darkroom you chose paper, contrast, exposure time, toning.
In digital you choose RAW profile, lens, presets, corrections, layers, masks.
With AI you choose prompts, style, iterations, blends, refinements.

There has always been a human making decisions.
There has always been artistic intention.

AI doesn’t steal that from you. It just gives you a more powerful language to express it.

AI vs Natural Intransigence

The problem is never the tool.
The problem is intransigence: that stubborn pride in saying:

“If I don’t understand it, it must be wrong.” Or “If it’s not what I learned, it doesn’t count.”

That’s not defending art. That’s just poorly managed fear.

I felt fear too:

The first time I saw a serious digital camera and thought:
“What’s going to happen to film now?”
The first time I opened Photoshop and it felt “less like photography”.
The first time an algorithm “improved” my images better than an old plugin.

But every time I crossed that line, the reward was huge: more control, more possibilities, more creative freedom.

You control AI (if you bother to learn it)

AI doesn’t think for you. It doesn’t dream for you. It doesn’t feel for you.

There is always:

A human writing a prompt, directing the intention.
A system producing a result based on that input.

If the result “isn’t what you wanted”, the problem is not “evil AI”.
The problem is:

Not knowing how to ask for what you want.
Not understanding how to iterate until you get there.
Not accepting that you need to learn a new language,
just like when you went from darkroom to Camera RAW.

My biggest fear is not AI. It’s stopping learning.

With 30+ years of photography under my belt—awards, exhibitions, clients—there’s one thing
I have never thought: “I’m done. I don’t need to learn anything else.”

The day I say that, please, turn off the studio lights and lock the door behind me.

AI doesn’t take away my value as a photographer:

It forces me to refine my eye.
It pushes me to better understand light, body language, narrative, eroticism, elegance.
It reminds me that tools evolve, but sensitivity is ours.

So what do we do with all the negative comments?

They’re not going away. Let’s be realistic.
But you can choose how you stand in front of them:

As a victim:
- “People don’t get it.”
- “The world has gone to hell.”
As a professional in evolution:
- “They don’t like it because they don’t know it yet.”
- “I know what I’m doing and where I’m going.”
- “My work speaks louder than their prejudice.”

My advice—honest and a bit tough:

Don’t waste time arguing with people who’ve already decided to hate AI.
Show your process. Educate those who are genuinely curious.
Keep creating, blending real photoshoots with digital art, body with fantasy, flesh with pixels.

Final note: blessing, not threat

If as a photographer you have lived through:

film,
digital,
darkrooms,
Photoshop,
stock CDs,
Plug Ins
Actions Presets
and now AI…

you are in a unique position in visual history. You’re both witness and protagonist of a chain of revolutions that, as Hauer said, will fade “like tears in the rain”.

The difference is what you choose to do with that:

Cling to natural intransigence?
Or embrace intelligence—human and artificial—as one single force serving your vision?

So when people ask me: “Are you using AI?”

I answer, without guilt and with a smile:

Of course I am. Just like I’ve always used every tool available
to create images that wouldn’t exist without me.