Can you tell the difference between the two photographs to the right? At first glance, they seem like two images of the same cheetah at two different angles. What if I told you that one of the two is entirely artificially curated? 

(On the left: Photograph by Frans Lanting, On the right: AI-generated Image by the program DALLᐧE 2 using the prompt, “National Geographic Style profile photograph of a Cheetah in Africa.”)

With the development of AI software such as DALLᐧE 2, photos can be not only heavily manipulated but can now be created from scratch. Photography style used to be unique to each individual photographer, but with the use of photographer’s work to train this new software, AI is now able to recreate specific styles and types of photography. This threatens the unique styles of photographers all over the world and thus, it devalues the work of many. If a high-quality and extremely realistic photo can be formed in the blink of an eye, what would the world need photographers for? 

The threat that AI brings to photojournalism is evident in the fact that it replaces the need for photographers from a working standpoint, and it devalues photographers’ work from an artistic standpoint. Overall, Artificial Intelligence can not only harm the photojournalism industry but it could eventually eliminate it. Once we reach the point where humans cannot tell the difference between a computer-generated image and a real photograph, we will possibly be too late to stop it.