Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about three things every artist is up against today: AI, authenticity, and the algorithm. These aren’t small forces by any stretch of the imagination. They shape what we see, what gets shared, and even how we feel about our own work.
This really hit me when I was scrolling through my feed and saw two very similar images stacked one after the other. One was influenced by AI. The other was fully human-made. What surprised me wasn’t the images themselves, it was the comments and social interaction they received. One post had quick praise and surface-level reactions. The other had people saying they came back to the image multiple times because of how it made them feel.
That moment made something very clear to me. Human-made images often come from real experiences, real places, and real emotions. They may not always stop the scroll right away, but they tend to stay with people longer. That difference matters.
Around the same time, I had the chance to record a podcast with my friend Nicholas Albert on the Lakescape Photography Podcast. We talked openly about art, editing, and how reality is different for every person behind the camera.
We also talked about the pressure artists feel to please purists, chase trends, or, in some cases, feed this algorithm. At the core of that conversation was one simple idea: your art should reflect your experience, not someone else’s expectations. You don’t need to apologize for your choices or your style if they are honest and authentic to you.
I don’t think the future of art is about beating AI or winning against the algorithm. I think it’s about understanding their role and then choosing authenticity anyway. AI can be a tool. The algorithm can be a delivery system. But authenticity is the signal that people respond to.
That’s the one thing we still control. My hope is that both the video and the podcast encourage you to trust your experience and keep making work that feels real to you, because that’s what people are looking for regardless of the algorithm or the likes, and shares.
Linked below are the two videos. If you are a podcast listener, you can find Nicholas’ podcast on these platforms: Spotify • Apple • YouTube
For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
I was shocked that you showed the AI image that you edited. I didn’t figure you would ever go down that road. It’s one thing to edit either in Lightroom and or Photoshop to make one’s photo look like what they saw and other to do what you showed. This AI image thing is for some people to get noticed in life but eventually this whole thing with photography is going to come crashing down along with social media.
I’m an artist, I was an artist LONG before I was a photographer, about 20 years actually. I am open to new trends, but I, in no way, find AI images to be photographs and have a strong delineation between what is a photograph and what is generated art. I will always pursue new art trends to see how they fit into my work and the expression I want to make. It has nothing to do with “getting noticed in life” 😉
Let’s be clear, this is NOT photography and Photographers need to stop acting like there’s a turf war here. They are NOT photographs. They are digital art pieces that happen to look like photographs.
Very interesting and well mentioned the differences between the effects of IA made Images and and the human made images.Thanks
thank you for being open-minded to the topic.