From the Recommendo newsletter:
An artist I follow on Instagram is Tim Tadder. He is a fashion photographer and recently his fashion photos have all been AI co-generated. These images are no more (or less) synthetic than most fashion photography, and a lot more imaginative. We should call them synthographs, and Tadder, a brilliant synthographer.
What do we call passages co-created with generative AI? Arguments formulated using the tech? Code written by it?
I understand why one thinks how AI-created and edited images and other material are qualitatively different from their human-only counterparts, but I personally no longer think so.
We have used technology to enhance photographs for decades now. The first zoom lens did not make a picture a zoomograph. Nor did the first digital camera turn it into a pixelograph. As for synthographs, phone have been using on-board AI techniques to edit & “improve” images for a few years now. The line between the essence of what those techniques already do and generative AI does is, in my opinion, blurry.
What we call a photograph has changed dramatically over time, and our expectation of what one is has likewise changed.
It’ll be the same when it comes to other applications. Philosophy aided by generative AI won’t be called philosynthosophy – but it’s going to be rather interesting.