Pure fantasy can be a visual reality

Left feeling uninspired by the almost industrial design of Sony Alpha cameras, Italian photographer Andrea Pizzini set about creating Algenerated versions of his favourite cameras. He shares his thoughts with James Abbott about what this new technology means to him

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Image generation using artificial intelligence is a highly contentious issue in photography, there’s no getting away from it. It spans many ethical questions, ranging from the training of AI algorithms using images scraped from the internet without the permission of the copyright owners to questions of veracity in news and documentary photography and beyond. Not least the fear that professional photographers might one day be replaced by AI.

It’s a complex subject and it’s fair to say that as photographers, we all have our own opinions. However, the debates surrounding AI image generation aren’t black and white, and not all images created using this method are designed to mislead people into believing an alternative view of the world or reality. Some images are created out of curiosity, and that was Andrea Pizzini’s starting point when he began creating mesmerizing and indeed fun images of Sony Alpha cameras.

Clear goal 

So, why create Sony cameras with AI? Andrea had a clear goal in the beginning and it’s far from the sinister portrayal of AI in the media. He explained, ‘There are two reasons; I wanted to test the new  AI-generation tools to see what’s going on, and if we’re going to lose our jobs soon; and the second reason I chose cameras is because I’m a writer on sonyalpharumors.com and I own Sony cameras, but I’ve never really liked the design of them.’