Thirty years ago, photo editing meant painting and airbrushing prints by hand. Then Photoshop arrived and wiped out most of those jobs. Over the last few years, AI software like Evoto did the same thing to advanced Photoshop skills. Slide a few controls and get results that once took years to learn. Photographers loved it...Until now.
Evoto recently released an online AI headshot generator (which was quickily pulled down). Anyone could upload a bad photo and instantly get a polished professional headshot. No lighting. No posing. No photographer. Predictably, photographers are furious.
I understand the fear. Fstoppers is built on photography, but I'm afraid everyone might be jumping to conclusions.
I have spoken with teams building similar AI tools. Most are not photographers, and they do not need to be. The software is not making artistic decisions. It is doing detection. Faces. Blemishes. Backgrounds. Anyone can judge which result looks better.
The claim that Evoto trained its model on user uploads also misses the mark. Companies like Google already built massive AI models trained on billions of images from the internet. Smaller companies rent access to those models. Evoto did not need your photos.
More importantly, this software already exists for free. You can generate professional headshots using Google tools right now. You can do it inside Photoshop using the same underlying models. You can even ask it to mimic the style of famous headshot photographers. For free.
So if you are angry at Evoto, you should be more angry at Photoshop. And even more angry at Google. And if they did not do it, OpenAI would have. This outcome was inevitable.
Three years ago I said AI was coming for our jobs. Many dismissed it. This time is different. Not because the results are perfect today, but because they are good enough and improving fast. Anyone still paying for basic headshots or product photography simply does not know this exists yet.
There is also hypocrisy here. Photographers happily used software that wiped out professional retouchers. We celebrated automation when it helped us. Now it is coming for us.
Evoto is not evil. They are a software company doing their job. We are photographers facing a market that no longer needs what we sell. The controversy is not about Evoto going too far. It is about photographers finally realizing what is already here.
4 Comments
You end your comment with “stop spending money on AI tools, you feed the beast that will eat you”... which is a pretty stark contradiction to everything you said before it. You can’t simultaneously argue that AI won’t replace skilled photographers AND warn people they’re feeding a beast that will devour them.
The outrage isn’t about hobbyists or people who “never intended to build skills.” It’s about the commercial headshot market... a legitimate specialty that many photographers have built careers around. When a company offers free AI headshots, they’re not targeting lazy amateurs, they’re targeting the clients who used to pay for professional work.
The question isn’t whether you can still take great photos. The question is whether clients will pay for them when “good enough” is free, nd calling people who use AI tools “lazy” while acknowledging wedding photographers benefit from them is just gatekeeping with extra steps.
I build AI tools for photographers, but the difference is I build tools that serve photographers and make their work better... not tools designed to replace them entirely and give the result away for free as a marketing stunt. That distinction matters, and it’s worth being outraged about.
"Real commercial photographers continue to be hired for their vision, consistency, problem-solving ability, professionalism, and style. No AI headshot generator replaces those qualities." You assume that clients value consistency, problem-solving ability, professionalism, and style. More than two decades in the agency world taught me otherwise. Mediocre work is not only accepted, it is expected. A majority of corporate clients are looking to tick boxes and do it within budgets that will continue to shrink because of the "just let AI do it" mentality. Sam Hurd hit the nail on the head - "When a company offers free AI headshots... they’re targeting the clients who used to pay for professional work." Evoto screwed us.
I think the majority of us thought our relationship with Evoto as a partnership. It was very shocking to find out that they were building a tool that would put us all of of work. Our favorite headshot photographer "Peter Hurley" brought Evoto in to the Headshot Crew and introduced us to the software. I think it is reasonable to understand that we all feel betrayed.
Cindy Quinn
CMQ HEADSHOTS
https://cmqheadshots.com
Agreed 100%!
Robert Owenby
ROBERT MITCHEL OWENBY PHOTOGRAPHY
https://www.robertmitchelowenby.com