In 1835, William Talbot finally succeeded in producing a photograph of his country house. He declared that his was the first house ever known to have drawn its own picture. The drawing was formed "by the action of light upon sensitive paper." Photography offered nature a "pencil" to paint herself through optical (光学的) and chemical means alone.
By the mid-nineteenth century, people no longer needed to hire a draftsman to draw detailed images because the process could be completed instantly with a camera. Advocates for the technology stated that not only was it more precise than the human hand — it was faster and cheaper.
The removal of human fallibility in the creating process was one of photography's biggest selling points, but this also started debates about the new medium's implications for visual culture. Could images made largely by a machine be considered art? If so, where did human creativity fit in this process?
As the twenty-first century becomes increasingly automated, more and more people attempt to identify where human agency exists in the technologically driven world. Images generated with artificial intelligence by companies like OpenAI are stimulating questions like those that emerged with the coming of the photograph. By typing a sentence, users can generate "new" images composed from images collected across the Internet. The result has been a flood of Al-generated images in places that are previously unique to human authors. Painting competitions, commercial graphic design and the fashion of portraiture (肖像) have all since collided (碰撞) with the technology in troubling ways.
The fine arts were thought to be a final hold-out of human creativity but the surprisingly high quality of AI-generated images is producing deeper questions about the nature of originality. If the history of photography tells us anything, it's that the debate won't be settled quickly, straightforwardly, or by the institutions we typically associate with cultural gate keeping.
