AI powered photography software is getting so good that it may make us obsolete. This may have already happened with real estate photography.
A realtor friend of mine with zero experience bought a camera after seeing my video about Fotello. He went out to shoot a listing and completely botched it. Every image was 3-7 stops underexposed.Without question the worst real estate photos I’ve ever seen.
I assumed he’d reshoot.
He didn’t.
He uploaded the images into Fotello and sent me the results. I didn’t believe him at first, and asked for the original raw files. He wasn't lying and the finished images looked incredible.
I was worried that AI software would make photo editing obsolete, but its now so good, that it's also made understanding the basic functions of a camera optional.
I released the video at the top of this post telling this story and the comment section on Youtube was overwhelmed with people calling me a liar. They said the "before" images were too horrible, and no person would ever photograph an entire house that poorly, and that the "after" pictures were too good. They believed that I had taken the pictures and made up this story simply to advertise the software. To prove them wrong I interviewed my friend.
He’s real.
He bought a used Sony camera, didn’t know how to use it, and shot an entire property severely underexposed and without bracketing but still got fantastic results.
As I mentioned in both videos, Fotello is a sponsor, and I’m obviously impressed with their software, but I’m torn because I know tools like this could eventually make photographers obsolete. So what should I do, pretend it doesn’t exist? Should we boycott software that’s too automated? And if so, shouldn’t we also boycott modern cameras with incredible dynamic range that make this possible?
I don’t think it’s worth trying to fight AI. It’s not coming, it’s already here. Use it to make money today while you can, because as it gets better, making money with photography will only become harder.
5 Comments
Someone still has to take the photos. Also, whoever takes the photos needs to have some basic compositional skills, staging, etc. otherwise the images will look like nicely exposed crap.
He could have done this with his phone. I imagine most photos will be adjusted with this software version soon.
You are standing too close to your subject to have good perspective.
In all the pictures you showed, not one was shot by the AI camera operator. Old fashion, but selection of subject, angle framing etc. are what the phtographer was all about. As Ansel Adams was growing phtography for us, Picasso was not bitching because he didn't have to even mix his paints! Renoir was painting things no one else thought would be a good picture. All AI does is make the technical stuff work better in a picture someone actually took. But for humanity, and pathos, it's often the incorrectness that provides the meaning.
Don't get me wrong. I hate AI because it manufactures crap that's perfect and likely to lead masses away from real meaning.
Yikes this click bait. These are objectively horrible. I think cheap $250 re photography might be in trouble, but here in California most realtors who are selling anything decent choose quality and pay much more for it.