I’ve spent a fair bit of time over the past month or two discussing Artificial Intelligence (AI) with many people, including various members of the RPS as we navigate through trying to contribute to the conversation about how best to incorporate this into the world of photography and the RPS.

It seems to me that there are a number of quite distinct “camps” that we need to consider here, and each has different challenges and opportunities. The unifying thread connecting all the camps is imagery - and note the word I use - imagery, not photography.

Let’s start with the camp that I suspect most of the readers of this article fall into - amateur photographers. We have joined the RPS to connect with other like-minded folks who enjoy taking out a camera and capturing photographs. But even here, within the RPS, there’s a number of quite different sub-camps.

One of these sub-camps are those who take part in competitions. These are perhaps the ones most affected (potentially) by the current debate on how far AI should be “allowed” to contribute to images submitted for competition. I say “allowed” because AI IS already contributing to many if not all competition images. The processing in our cameras is huge these days - eye-detection, image stabilisation, and when phone images are also used, computational rendering of multiple shots to create a single final image all within a fraction of a second. SOOC (straight out of camera) is no longer a term that really carries any meaning as it used to, given the processing that goes on in-camera these days.

Once our images are out of camera and into Lightroom, or whatever your processor of choice is, things continue. All these applications now routinely employ AI to mask, remove, move and enhance images. Some of this is done so that it’s almost impossible to see that editing has occurred, but does that mean that it’s OK?

This is the issue here. Where’s the line? And for what competitions?

Clearly, if there’s an Open category where anything goes, then all bets are off. But how will nature competitions handle processing images in any of the new Sharpening apps such as Topaz or DXO. These apps add in detail that wasn’t in the original image - hairs, leaves, feathers. It’s very realistic but it’s not what was recorded by the camera sensor, perhaps due to shake, subject movement or just lack of resolution in the amateur level optics of the lens.

And if, as I heard about recently, judges can disqualify images they see were processed in such applications, then this hands a huge advantage to those who can afford top quality gear and lenses - something most amateurs can’t. We want to go out and shoot that squirrel or pine marten and create the best rendition we can, and if that means running it through a denoise and sharpen app because it was a miserable overcast day and we had to shoot at 12,000 ISO, why should that be penalised?

No easy answers here folks! The RPS, and every other photographic body, is looking at all this actively, and trying to come up with relevant and appropriate responses, but it is, and will continue to be, a moving target - just like those pesky pine martens!