Why AI can’t replace photography
January 26, 2025
Over the past week, with AI high on the agenda, questions about the future of content creation and its means have been increasing. During one of many exchanges at the WEF week in Davos, we reflected on storytelling and image-making in the age of artificial intelligence.
The host of the roundtable showed a black-and-white photograph: a person standing still in the middle of a busy street, possibly in an Asian metropolis, the city blurred in motion around them. Their gaze was locked onto the camera - a poetic, powerful image.
Her question was simple: If you didn’t know, could you tell whether this image was AI-generated or real?
The image was convincing. It could have been real. I’m sure hours were invested in finding the perfect prompt and refining adjustments to arrive at that result.
But my comment came almost immediately as I observed her work:
“You can use this image to tell a story, but you can’t tell a story about the image.” The circle went quiet.
Photography is more than “just” images. It’s an experience. It’s about discovering angles, exploring, and being curious about perspectives.
It includes the moment of noticing, the decision to press the shutter, experimenting with settings, and everything around it: conversations, smells, temperature, distractions, light, timing, chance, and presence. All the invisible layers that shape a single frame, and the uniqueness of that single moment.
AI-generated images can be powerful tools - especially when you need a specific visual to accompany something you want to communicate, but not more than that.
When I look at a (real) photograph, I wonder:
Where was the photographer standing?
Who is the person in front of the lens?
What happened before and after this moment?
What stories live beyond the frame?
The sensory world around that static moment matters. That in itself is a story to tell.
You can generate an image of a mountain while sitting in a coworking space in Zurich. But you can’t feel the wind, breathe the air, hear the silence, meet the locals, or stumble into unexpected moments that only exist because you were there.
You can fabricate a story about a person. But you can’t truly meet them, understand their lived experience, or be moved or nudged by their perspective and lived reality.
I see how AI can replace certain functions - and open space for new forms of creation. Nevertheless, if someone asks about the story behind an AI-generated image, there won’t be much to tell, nor many experiences to share (aside from a concept or an idea to convey). Nor will it leave room to create an image that wasn’t initially anticipated.
AI can surely enable creativity in new ways, but personally, I don’t see it replacing photography. As I heard a few hours after this initial conversation in another Davos talk on creativity and AI: “Photography never killed painting.”
It’s not a replacement - it’s simply another medium.
I’m curious to hear your personal thoughts on the subject.