I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently reading about AI – it seems to suddenly be everywhere, even though the quality of its output is still questionable and its accuracy is depressingly low.
What it feels is insidious – it seems to be being pushed really hard at the moment, with random posts about how wonderful it supposedly is popping up in the most unlikely forums and groups. It’s also rapidly being embedded everywhere, and we’re not given any choice about this or any way to switch it off.
One incident specifically triggered writing this post and another one which will follow, both based on an excerpt from my journal at the very beginning of June.
At a networking event in late May, I was talking to two women I’d not met before. A mutual friend of ours who was also there told them gleefully that as well as being a photographer, I’m a professional mermaid. Cue the usual questions, excitement and me finding a video to show them.
As we watched my tail gliding through the water, their faces lit up with the awe and joy that mermaiding often brings to people when they first see it in action.
Except this time, for the first time ever, one of them said “If I hadn’t met you first I’d have assumed that video was AI.”
And my heart broke.
For her, not for me. Because I started mermaiding in 2014, and have had eleven years of joy, magic, flying underwater, community, new friends, mad experiences and the memories of all those things even when life circumstances have meant I can’t swim often or at all.
If my first encounter with mermaiding, way back in 2012, watching Hannah Fraser swim with whale sharks in a sequin tail, had been AI – or I had assumed it was – I’d have missed out on all of that, and a really big part of my identity.
Watching a mermaid swimming underwater might be soothing or fun no matter how it was created, but if you assume it’s AI and don’t question that, you don’t then become aware of mermaiding as a real thing, of how it feels to fly underwater, and of the community and possibilities around that.
It becomes just one more video of a few seconds to scroll past in the hunt for whatever it is we are seeking in the endless scroll.
If we have already reached a point where people assume real things are AI because so much is AI – leaving aside the ethics of training data and the impact on artists for another post – what real life experiences and magic are people going to miss out on? Mermaiding might be niche, but this is everywhere – and it’s making me sad and angry in equal measure.
I don’t understand why making generated content nearly indistinguishable from real human made art and words and videos and photos is even a goal.
But it will not be finding its way into my work. Everything you see here is real – costumes, props, makeup, and skill with my cameras, light and editing in Lightroom and Photoshop. And an entire wardrobe of mermaid tails!
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Fancy being the real life mermaid you always dreamed of? Indulge your childhood dreams with a mermaid photoshoot, in my studio or on location on the Essex coast. Intrigued? Drop me an email! hello@carlawatkinsphotography.com
