Ai vs Real World Experience

Mar 24, 2023


Synthography vs Photography

There will be lots of play on words as AI becomes more and more mainstream.

And if you think AI won’t take over some portion of your world, be it personally or professionally, you may want to take a second and have a look around.

Did you know you can send in a handful of selfies and AI can generate a whole mess of professional-looking headshots for you? Or product shots?
Yea, wild. And the cost is less than coffee and a bagel in some instances. So why wouldn’t you?

And I say, go for it! Try it out!

I’ve seen a few people post theirs and some are pretty cool.
Though watch out for the teeth and eyes. Dead give-aways.
But also, you don’t have much say in some of the elements used. 

Some people have been given hair color that totally isn’t them. Others have been given a more risqué look when all they were looking for was a headshot for LinkedIn, not Only Fans 😬
And for others, they don’t look anything like them.

Why? Because they are all computer generated. It ain’t real!
It’s not honest eye contact.

I also have huge issues with the fact that AI generators are using visuals that aren’t all from the free space. 
Meaning, it’s thieving imagery from artists and that’s not cool.

But AI will spit out a very keen likeness (sometimes).

It’s not you – you. 

It’s a fabricated you. 

It’s AI YOU.

And for some instances, that’s going to be more than fine. 

As a professional photographer making her living off of creating images of humans and their creations, it is definitely sending me a bit.
I’m concerned, I’ve got bills to pay.

Fear that AI is gonna take my job is, well, a true concern.



Then again, I know the experience I offer people is something that will, hopefully, transcend an AI-generated end result.

While my goal is to get an end product that’ll have you saying “YES! You got my business, you got my creation., you got ME”

What happens between point A and point B isn’t simply uploading some selfies into a computer and then me generating a bunch of impersonal look-a-like images.
There’s care, there’s coaching, and there’s encouragement. 

There’s a connection.

I like to say it’s sort of like business coaching and a therapy session with some deep breathing sprinkled in.
It’s about feeling seen and being heard.

It’s about YOU.
Where AI is about AI.

But look, AI is also really interesting!

In only a few short months, AI generators have been performing and impressing us with their abilities.

AI has passed the law bar and it’s created kind of professional-looking (tho still sort of creepy) headshots.
It’s writing code, web copy, and novels.
AI has created whole worlds where ones never existed. 

There are even AI studies where they are tapping into our thoughts to generate imagery.
The robots can read out minds!

I mean, I am no scientist and I certainly don’t understand all the ins and outs of this tech, but, one thing for sure I know is, it’s all energy.
From our computers and phones to our own internal electrical fissures and pops.
We are all energy.
We are all connected.

So to say that AI is a passing fad or won’t potentially shore up your regularly flowing life would be to disregard the importance of this moment.
And that moment is here. Now.

And it’s going to stay.

Much like cordless phones replaced the old rotary. Like encyclopedias were booted out by the internet.
Film vs digital. Canon vs Nikon – wait wait. Wrong discussion 😉 

(and, by the way, it’s Nikon FTW).

AI is coming in and coming in fast. Faster than most of us may be prepared for.
And that’s okay. Roll with it. Figure it out. Find a way to use that tool for the betterment of your business, your career, your clients, for your world.

I mean, as I type this (and I am literally typing this on my laptop as I sit in my bed, listening to calming ocean waves on the cordless speaker next to me) – AI is helping me to fix my spelling and to add in punctuation where I missed it. 

It’s even offering me how I could rearrange a sentence to help make it sound better.

And in a lot of those cases, I am going to high-five AI and say HECK YEA – Thank you Robort (Robot + Robert).
But in others, it can’t quite figure out that I’m being silly. Making up words, or phrases, because we Humans get that. 

And AI doesn’t.
For instance, Robort. It doesn’t get that made-up name.

But soon, AI will get that, too. It’s learning our silliness, it’s adapting to our way of communicating and sharing.
It’s attempting to make that connection. 

Because at the core of it all, don’t we all want to connect? Don’t we all want to belong to something, somewhere, someone?

Or feel we belong. Why do we have friends, why do we choose to have partners? Why do we do things with them? 

Experience. 

Experience connects us. 

And currently, AI doesn’t offer experience Not in the way that we Humans truly crave. 

Tho, with the speed at which AI is morphing, experience is on the horizon.
Soon, there will be a way to connect and experience in ways that many were gatekept out of.
Soon, AI will warp our reality, in ways that we can’t quite comprehend.

And again, that is okay. 


There are deeper implications and far-reaching scenarios that, if I sit to think about it too much, it makes me want to shut off my brain and go move to a little cabin near the coast without any access to the interwebs. Live out my days growing strawberries and making herbal potions while being referred to as the Ocean Witch of Sausalito. 

I mean, that’s like my dream life, but anyways.

Pulling back from the world domination threat, at its core, AI is a tool.
And every season tools come to us and we can either adapt, learn and use them for the improvement of our worlds, individually as well as collectively. 

Or we can resist – and I am a huge fan of resisting if it means lifting others up and helping others out. 


But with AI, as Borg said, resistance is futile.
The infusion of AI into our worlds has been here for some time and it’s only going to make a stronger impact and create a larger footprint. 

I cannot view this as a time to become scared – it’s too mesmerizing and intriguing to me.

But I can use it to learn. To figure out how to use it to my advantage.
I don’t know what 3 years will look like, or 3 months from now. All I do know is it’s going to be a wild ride.

And I feel that if you want to learn to surf, you should learn now because the waves are coming whether you want them to or not. 

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