The Intersection of AI and Interior Photography with Tom Blachford

Can AI redefine the creative boundaries of photography? Join us as we explore this captivating question with Tom Blachford, a distinguished architecture and interiors photographer who has ventured into the intriguing realm of AI art. Tom reveals his journey through the intersection of AI and interior photography, sharing insights from his recent high-profile projects, such as an AI art commission for the innovative restaurant, Tombo Den. We dive into the transformative impact of AI on creative professions and grapple with the ethical dilemmas and aesthetic shifts it introduces.

Discover how AI tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT are reshaping the way artists and designers express their creative visions. Tom discusses the emotional rollercoaster of working with AI—from initial fascination to the complex challenges that arise. By sharing personal anecdotes and experiences, we reveal how this technology propels us from laborious skill-based creations to dynamic idea-driven explorations, offering a multitude of creative possibilities. Our conversation traverses the delicate balance between awe and ethical concerns, as we ponder AI’s burgeoning role in art and design.

Finally, we confront the controversies sparked by AI-generated photos in award competitions and the ongoing debates surrounding authenticity and creativity. The episode takes a hopeful look at the future, underscoring the necessity for responsible AI development to enhance diversity and ensure the preservation of the human touch in photography and design. Engage with us in this thought-provoking discourse with Tom Blachford as we navigate the evolving landscape of AI in art, challenging traditional norms and expanding the horizons of creative expression.

Check out Tom's amazing photographic work including his Midnight Modern Series & his incredible AI creations below,

https://tomblachford.com/fine-art/
Instagram @blachford

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If you're sitting at your desk about to send a fee proposal and you'd just like to run it by someone else first? Or have you ever had a client dilemma and it just doesn't feel right but no one you know understands (except for the dog)?
And do you wonder why you're not raking it in when you're practically living at your desk, busting your creative chops 'round the clock?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Design Anatomy, the interior design
podcast hosted by friends andfellow designers, me, Lauren Li
and me, Bree Banfield, with someamazing guest appearances along
the way.
We're here to break downeverything from current trends
to timeless style, with a sharedpassion for joyful,
colour-filled and lived-inspaces.
We're excited to share ourinsights and inspiration with

(00:22):
you.
In this conversation, Laurenand I talk with Tom Blachford, a
professional architecture andinteriors photographer and AI
artist, so we delve into somereally fascinating things like
the intersection of AI andinterior photography, and Tom
shares his whole journey with AIart, how he started out in that

(00:43):
, and we discussed the evolutionof technology and its
implications for artists andphotographers.
It's just a really great deepdive into that.
Ai image generation oh my gosh,it sure is.
It's such a good discussionwith Tom.
We explore the ethicalconsiderations surrounding AI
generated images, the aestheticqualities of these kind of

(01:05):
images and the future ofinterior photography in a world
increasingly influenced by AI.
It's a really rare insight ofthat AI generation of images
from a professional photographerfrom their point of view, so
it's really really good, isn'tit Brie?
Yeah, no, some great, greattopics covered and some

(01:25):
interesting things said.
Yeah, it's interesting, we did.
Yeah, we did have a few thingswe're like.
Should we delete that?
No, we're going to keep it inthere.
So I hope you enjoy it.
But before we get going, I justwanted to remind you guys that
I have a sub stack blog which iscalled the Style Studies
Essentials.

(01:46):
So if you wanted to read moreabout interior design and kind
of, you know, dive into somegorgeous imagery, it's a free
subscription to join the StyleStudies on Substack.
And if you're not familiar withSubstack, it's a whole world of
amazing writers from all aroundthe world.
I love it.
You can also be a paidsubscriber and get a few little

(02:08):
extra things as well.
Yeah, substack's really cool.
I feel like it's taken offquite a bit too.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
I was just looking on there today.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
And it's just something for everyone.
It's just one of those coolplatforms.
Let's see what happens with itExactly.
Hopefully it'll stick around.
Yeah, and if you jump into theshow notes, you'll also find a
link there to sign up for newsfrom me, which will include
information about trends andshort courses and also, um,
keeping across the launch of ourdesign edit, which is, uh,

(02:40):
curated collections of furnitureand decor so that you can
basically get a pre-selectedconcept from me.
It's like working with me, butyou get a.
I guess you get to do it inyour own way.
You'll have all the informationthere and it's at the fraction
of the cost of working directlywith me on a bespoke design, but

(03:00):
you still get a cool space atthe end of it.
Clever, love it.
So good, brie.
All right, let's dive in andchat with Tom.
Awesome.
So, hi, tom, thank you so muchfor joining Lauren and I today
to talk about what I consideryou to almost be an expert on
now, which is AI and obviouslymore connected to interiors.

(03:24):
But before we dive into that,we always like to ask our guests
what have you been up to?
Tell us what you've been doinglately.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
It's been a busy year .
We had our second child, a babyboy, so that has made
everything permanently very busy.
So we've got two boys now and,yeah, I've had a really busy
year.
I guess my life is kind ofsplit between my commercial work
, which is interiors andarchitecture in the industry,
photographing for designers andarchitects, and between my fine

(03:54):
art photographic work, which isstuff that I've been working on
for a long time, like myMidnight Modern series from Palm
Springs and then AI work.
Yeah, thank you, my AI work,which has kind, uh, been
simmering for the last couple ofyears.
So I've just had a show of mymidnight modern works which you
both came to, which was gorgeousto see you there and, uh, that

(04:15):
was really great, great turnoutand good to get the work out
there in Melbourne.
And, uh, and I had a big AIproject come to fruition, which
was a commission from the LucasGroup for a new restaurant on
Chapel Street called Tombo Den,which has nine, 19, I think, um,
original AI produced artworksthat fill the restaurant that

(04:37):
are all framed and a couple onscreen.
So, yeah, that was a reallyepic, um, amazing process and,
yeah, that that is like kind ofmy own little gallery that lives
there now, which is awesome.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
So, yeah, it's been a busy year.
I haven't been in there.
Have you ever been in, have youLauren?

Speaker 2 (04:54):
No, but I'm going next week.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
So, tom, can you tell us, like, what did they?
What kind of brief did theygive you?

Speaker 2 (05:02):
The original brief was that they wanted people to
complain.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
They wanted Wow, that is hilarious About mercy.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that that's a different
brief.
Yeah, I feel like it's morelike a good person at that right
.
Yeah, there was kind of a storythat was given about this sort
of myth about how sushi wascreated, that it was created in
like a gambling den for this guywho was rolling dice and wanted
a snack you could eat with onehand, and I don't think the

(05:30):
story actually has any um anytruth to it in terms of the
actual origins of sushi, butit's it's quite a delicious tale
and so that kind of led alittle bit of the exploration
that it was kind of like a weirdJapanese Yakuza acid trip
nightmare vibe that I was kindof going for with the work.
So, yeah, I went really deepdown the rabbit hole, probably

(05:53):
produced five, maybe four or5,000 images and presented them
with about 800 images for thefinal selection, and then we had
to get that down to 20 or so.
So it was uh, it was a greatprocess.
I was working with dkoarchitects and with the creative
team from locust brood, so itwas uh, it was cool.

(06:13):
So that it's kind of it's alittle bit of an underground
secret.
My work, my name, is not reallyplastered anywhere in there.
The works just kind of live inthis weird world that it's kind
of like an if you know, you knowthing.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
So yeah, yeah.
So who brought you on to theproject?

Speaker 2 (06:30):
uh dko did the um, the architects.
They kind of had a vision forwhere that the artwork is going
to be a really important part ofthe interiors and the and the
tone of everything.
So they kind of brought me onquite early to try and fit in
with the direction that theywanted and see if we could find
a way that you know, madeeverybody happy with the result,
so yeah, it was reallyfascinating.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
So are they photorealistic?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yes, yeah, yes, but we tried to keep some AI
weirdness into them.
Everybody's kind of got sixfingers or four fingers.
I quite enjoy seeing thoseflaws in the AI because they're
already disappearing.
The new algorithms aren'tmaking those mistakes anymore,
and so I find it a kind of aromantic time when we could see
the man in the machine a littlebit and be able to tell, or be

(07:16):
able to look closer and tell.
So I yeah, I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
A romantic time.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Romantic time where people have different number of
fingers and toes and odd stuffand limbs and everything else
Weed watermarks.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, yeah, watermarks yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Well, that sort of brings us to one of our first
discussion points, which is sortof like I've written AI as a
fairly new tool, but it's notreally.
Is it Like?
When did you first not reallyis it Like?
When did you first kind of comeacross it and how did that sort
of start your fascination in AIin terms?

Speaker 2 (07:53):
of, I guess, creating images.
I got into it probably in 2018or 19, before all these kind of
diffusion models that could doanything, and at that time there
was a.
The models were all called GANsgenerative adversarial network
and they were quite easy tounderstand and explain really
fascinating but quiteinteresting and the GANs would
only really have a single task.
There was one that could dopeople.

(08:13):
There was a website that I usedto show people, called this
person does not exist, and I'dshow you know, show people and
say this person doesn't exist,and they just couldn't believe
it.
It was another one that couldtransfer a style, could take you
know a picture and you couldput in starry, starry night and
it would make that picture inthe style of starry, starry
night.
And so I was really interestedin kind of 2019, 2020 into these
technologies and thinking like,oh wow, I must be in trouble,

(08:36):
because if people can just go toPalm Springs and then add
moonlight later, then you know,maybe I'm screwed.
And then it was 2021 that allthat first model started coming
out.
Mid Journey, version three, wasthe first one that I used and,
yeah, it blew my mind.
I did not think that we wouldarrive at a point where we could
make anything just from promptsas soon as we did, and no idea

(09:01):
that it would accelerate or thatChatG, gpt would be coming on
the scene as well.
So, yeah, I'd say, probablycoming up to almost three years
of using Midjourney and I thinkI've produced about 30,000
images on Midjourney, which isnot that many I could have
produced a lot more, but I kindof go through periods of being
totally disgusted by it and notto go near it and other times of

(09:23):
being absolutely obsessed withit.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
What was it that actually drew you to the idea of
, like, where did you actuallycome across it?
Do you remember like, what wasthat first thing where you went?
Oh, this is interesting.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
I think somewhere on the internet I think the earlier
ones were, I can't remember themodel, but I think it was Dali
came out first and people usingDali, and then there was kind of
bootleg Dali, and so I guess wewere all kind of on the lookout
and like crappy memes on theinternet were getting done with
with AI, and then, yeah, I think, uh, I found a YouTuber who was

(09:57):
making stuff and uh managed myhead around me in general.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
So you just sort of stumbled across it.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, kind of, look, I had been looking for a few
years.
I'd been working with a reallygreat, amazing render artist, a
3D artist, because I'd kind ofrealized that I had ideas about
design and architecture that Iwanted to explore.
I wanted to explore kind ofmyth making and creating these
kind of false narratives andfalse histories of things, and

(10:22):
so I was working with an amazing3D artist.
but that process is so laborious, you know, it takes them
hundreds of hours to do things,and so I'd been sort of looking
into digital representations ofimages and how to create images
of things that didn't exist fora while, and so I was gagging,
for I'd even bought like a superexpensive, powerful computer to

(10:42):
try and teach myself Blender,to try and learn 3D, to try and
onboard myself with all of thisreally difficult, really
arbitrary stuff, to learn how tomodel stuff, how to texture
stuff, how to animate stuff, andso I spent some time in
lockdown doing that and it washard, so hard, to onboard with,
and so I was so relieved when AIcame out and I could just

(11:04):
explore images without it taking, you know, hours and hours and
hours to tweak every littlething, that I could just apply
my taste to things instead oflamenting the fact that I didn't
have those skills, you knowwhich some people are going to
be listening.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, yeah, and of course you sort of want to
create.
Well, sorry, go ahead, tom.
What we're going to say somepeople?
No, I was just, of course, somepeople are listening, because
you sort of want to create.
Well, sorry, go ahead, tom.
What were you going to say?
Some people are listening.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
No, I was just going to say some people yes, yeah,
obviously, anyone who has gotthe skill is lamenting that
their skills are not asimportant anymore, that people
would confuse what they used todo.
That took a huge amount ofskill and processing power and
human capital, and capital to docan now be done, you know, very
, very quickly by, arguably,people with no skill.

(11:47):
But I'm still in love with itand that has not really
dissuaded me, and I'm not onefor skill worship.
I think that I'm on the side ofideas and I want to see ideas
come to life and, however thathappens, I'm okay with that.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, and I feel like what, what you do, like how
you're exploring it?
You probably wouldn't, like yousaid, you sort of started to
work with someone with withthose skills, but realize that
that is so labor intensive.
It's sort of you lose the loveof what you're actually trying
to do.
Right, because you're trying toum, I don't know convey an idea
, or it is an art form.
You weren't trying to, likecreate an exact interior that

(12:24):
you're then selling to someoneto build, or etc so it probably
doesn't need to have that levelof skill applied to it.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Really, it's way more make-believe yeah, then I also
needed to see options.
I um, I I didn't know what Iwanted.
I I was going to know when Isaw it, but it's not really fair
to sound like a lot of clientsof ours exactly.
Well, this is the thing you know, and I'm.
I have clients too.
If somebody asks me, hey, can Isee another hundred options,

(12:50):
then I'm gonna be grumpy aboutit.
But with a, with ar you, youcan do that.
You can ask to see anotherhundred versions, and by seeing
another hundred versions itrefines your own taste of what
you want, what you thought youwant.
You know it's.
It's sharpening you all thetime.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
Lauren, I guess I think you should weigh in.
I feel like I'm probably thelightweight in this group today
because I think you I mean Tom'sdefinitely the heavy, heavy
weight.
But, lauren, you've spent timereally delving into AI and
you've actually taught someskills on how to use it with
interiors.
Like when did you start lookingat it?

(13:26):
Was it sort of in that sametime, like around that
mid-journey, when that becamekind of, I guess, more popular?
Yeah, I mean so many of thosethings that you were saying, tom
, I was just writing some notes.
I'm like, oh, yep, yep, yep,like there's so many great
things that you've just said tounpack.
I liked what you said about youfeeling disgust versus sort of
the fascination, and I strugglewith that too, because, you know

(13:48):
, sometimes I'll sort of feel,you know, even thinking about
your work as a photographer, andI feel like it's like the snake
eating its own tail, likeyou're.
But then there's like rebirthand creativity coming out of
that as well.
But I just find it reallyfascinating, especially coming
from a photographer, and youknow you touched on that skill
and everything 3D renderers, Imean photography like it's just

(14:12):
changing the landscape sorapidly.
And I struggle with thatfascination and that disgust as
well.
You know, and you were saying,those 3D renderers.
You know what happens with alltheir skills.
Well, they're probably half.
You know a lot of their workthey've produced is out there
that is drawn on, and withphotographers as well.
All of those images are juststolen by the AI apps.

(14:35):
And you know, you mentioned,you know, midjourney Dali.
You know there was no agreement, there was nothing in place.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
As far as I've learned, they stole all of that
imagery and it's just a free forall A bit of a hot take, but I
reckon it's more like borrowed.
I mean, I feel like the wordstole kind of gives a
connotation that they're takingit and not giving it back.
But they borrowed it, theylooked at it without telling
anyone.
Look, my work is veryextensively represented in the

(15:03):
data set and there is websiteswhere I can opt out of it and I
will not do that.
I I'm happy for my work to bein the data set.
I don't believe that my workbeing in the data set really
gives it a chance to even do agood job of replicating it.
And even if it could, good luckto everyone for selling it.
It's hard to sell prints.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
It's hard to sell images.
If they can, if they canbootleg my work and make
something out of it, fine.
But um, really, yeah,absolutely.
I just feel like I've umwritten two books and I've spent
so much money on photographyand I really value photography
so do I yeah yeah, like I justfind that.
So it's changing, it's shiftingand it's interesting to hear
your take on that.
Yeah, look, I'm just going tothrow in some layman's stuff for
the people listening who areinterested but don't know as

(15:53):
much that when you talk aboutopting out, there are so
obviously AI scrapes theinternet and data and that's
where it gains its informationto put things together, whether
that's words or images, butthere are now things in place
that you can put, even on yourown websites.

(16:14):
I guess, to stop it from doingthat which I find interesting,
because surely that's just goingto be a continual update,
because it'll just keep findingways around that.
I'm sure I was talking tosomeone actually about it last
week keep finding ways aroundthat.
I'm sure I was talking tosomeone actually about it last
week and they were saying thatinstead of opting for something
you can put on the website, theyjust put something in their T's
and C's.
So if they ever have to go afteranyone for taking something

(16:37):
they feel has been plagiarized,it's in the T's and C's, so that
they can kind of go well, theT's and C's are here.
They can kind of go.
Well, the t's and c's are here.
You're not allowed to do it,but they didn't actually try and
block ai from actually doing it.
But anyway, I just wanted to goback to that just so people
understand.
That's what.
That's what you're referring to, tom, and you're referring to
your actual photography work,like the um the midnight am I
gonna get it wrong.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Say what's the name of the series.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Thank, you hang on, that's right.
Yeah, the Midnight Modernseries.
So you're not concerned thatpeople will try and, I guess,
copy that through AI, which Iguess is a possibility, right,
but you think that.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
I've been trying it's , I think.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
You've been trying to do it.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Of course, one of your questions it was what was
the first thing you did with AI?
It was try to see how good itwas at copying Midnight.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Modern yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
And it's not very good.
It's still not very good.
I'd love it to be better.
But look, not just my MidnightModern work, all of my work.
I mean this is a really hardthing and it's really
controversial, but I feel likestolen.
It doesn't feel like the rightword and it scraped everything
from the internet all at once.
Like it it's, but it's builtsomething kind of great out of
it.
It feels like it just stole,you know, like a tenth of a cent
from every person on earth andevery creative, and now it's

(17:49):
built a library out of it and II don't begrudge it, I really
don't.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
I've kind of always been a bit of a pirate, to be
honest, um, but but I but lotsof photos of you growing up with
different versions of pirateoutfits now, but anyway, that's
fair.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
I look, having used it and I've kind of taken a few
people through this exercisewhere I can produce something
using mid journey and then say,okay, fine, let's try and work
out what what it's referencingso I take that image and I put
it into google image search, Iput it into pinterest and I say
show me images that look likethis.
And some of the time, a of thetime, it can't produce anything
that looks anything like it.

(18:26):
And I can also then go back tothe data set and search the data
set of 5 billion images and Ican put that image that I
created in mid-journey back intothe data set and say show me
the image that this came from.
And it doesn't find it.
Not because it's being strangeand trying to lead you astray.
It's that went into it, it is.

(18:50):
I think there's possibly atendency of people to simplify
it into maybe a human form thatif you're going to, you know,
take stuff that it's going tomake this kind of like copyright
infringing collage of crap, butit honestly fed off everything
that was ever made and now itspits out new things and that's
that's hard to understand, Ithink, unless you've used it a
lot.
And, and yeah, I mean even mostof the time that I'm producing

(19:14):
work, I'm just using the singleprompt and I'm just running that
same prompt over and over again.
And so every time that you'retyping in the same text, even if
it's three words, for I thinkit is 56 million, uh, repeats in
a row it's going to give you acompletely different image.
So it's not running out ofideas, it's not recycling stuff,
it is just constantly producingnew imagery and uh, yeah, I

(19:39):
think that's amazing but at thesame time, I feel like there is
a lot of sameness.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
You know you are using it in a way that's very
nuanced, but you know if you goon to mid journey.
If I was to jump onto midjourney now, I would just see
the same old I don't know catswearing a space suit or some
random things that were notright.
They're not random, but they'remid-journey.
If I was to jump ontomid-journey now, I would just
see the same old I don't knowcats wearing a spacesuit or some
random things.
They're not random, but they'renot random.
But you just see the same thingand I can't look at an AI image

(20:06):
and it's going to get harderand harder.
But you can look at an imageand I've actually had clients
present me with AI images andsay I like a space like this.
They don't know, it's not realbecause it's on Pinterest, but
do you think there is anaesthetic that you can tell if
something is made by AI?

Speaker 2 (20:19):
It depends on the model.
I think that each model has itsown aesthetic and I can pick
quite a few of them, but notalways.
I think I'm probably better thanmost because I've produced
hundreds of thousands of realimages of interiors and I've
produced thousands of AI imagesof interiors, so I can probably

(20:41):
pick it based on things that Icould probably not describe to
anyone just the tone and shadowand light and the way that
things appear and things.
But it's getting really, reallydifficult.
We're basically in a time wherewe can't trust any images that
we see at all, and so I'm kindof trying to integrate that as
part of my art practice, thatI'm creating these myths that
are super convincing, that arevisually perfect and stunning,

(21:05):
and kind of take people on thislike aha journey, but in an
incredibly low stakesenvironment where I'm not
showing an image of a politiciandoing something deplorable or
someone you know doing somethinghorrific.
I'm just saying, hey, look atthese underwater houses that you
didn't know about, andeverybody kind of goes is that
real, is that fake?
And I think having them askthose questions in an

(21:26):
environment where there'snothing to lose I think is
really interesting to me just interms of the psychology, but I
also feel like it's kind of partof my artistic responsibility
at the moment to explore thatline of where people's awareness
is.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
So could you tell us?
What is that safe environmentare you talking to?
About your Instagram account?

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
So could you let everyone know what the handle is
so we could have a look andthose on YouTube will be able to
have a look.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Sure, my handle is Blatchatchford,
b-l-a-c-h-f-o-r-d, and sothere's a little bit of a mix of
some conventional fine artphotography that I've done, but
there's also a lot of AI stuffthrown in there, and I don't
always label it or make it clear.
I do sometimes, but I yeah,that's where I've been posting.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
I like to keep us guessing.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, I haven't put any on my website yet.
I haven't worked out how tomake a section for it or how to
kind of translate.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Oh, it's only on your socials.
I actually didn't realize that.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, it's only on my socials for now.
I just you know how updatingwebsites is like, the thing
that's constantly bolted to thebottom of your to-do list.
I haven't put it there, butyeah, I've been exploring for
probably three years now,putting stuff on Instagram and
coming up with a whole backstory.
I'm really interested in thesekind of design myths that happen

(22:41):
and also the idea that whenthings happen before the
internet, there's all thesethings in books that people just
kind of treat as if it doesn'texist and so kind of playing on
that, that all these things thathappened kind of like pre-1990,
before the internet, you know,or well before the internet,
that I can kind of tell peoplethere's these whole stories and
these whole worlds that couldhave been real and you don't

(23:03):
know whether it's real andthat's fun.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
And I love it when people are really in those early
stages.
They're really questioning,they're like you really had a
lot of people scratching theirheads out there.
It was really fun to watch.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, even gorgeous, gorgeous John Golings, who's,
you know, the godfather ofarchitectural photography.
I put up a story aboutexploding vending machines in
Japan and John just deadpancommented wow, I didn't know
this happened, and you know thatwas early days.
And I was like, wow, I even youknow he's a master of image
making and this was version four.
Mid-journey it was really quiteobvious looking back, but yeah,

(23:38):
if people weren't on thelookout it'd get you.
We were not on the lookout whenyou were showing us those
images.
Definitely not then.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, I feel like now , you do kind of question things
more.
Definitely, but I thinkinitially, absolutely there
would be.
I know people would send methings and go is this real?
Well, I almost feel like evenphotography here's my hot take
on photography so I feel likephotography is sort of interiors

(24:17):
.
Photography is at a level thatit's almost replicating 3D
renders like it's so perfect andit's styled so within an inch
of its life into just like thisperfect image of a space.
Is it a who lives?

Speaker 2 (24:21):
there, who knows who cares, and I imagine I don't
live like that though.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Like a trend.
Lauren, you think this is atrend, that that's happening.
Well, I feel like it mightswing back around because you
know those images then we cansee be created by AI.
But I feel like I would love tosee interiors photography go
back to something where it showsthe person that lives there and
the quirks the people that livethere, and it's not so
perfectly styled Like, it's abit more loose and shows I don't

(24:48):
know just a little less uptight.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, Rory Gardner's doing a great job, I think.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
People that aren't quite on board yet are probably
the brands.
I think they still wanteverything to be somewhat
perfect and yet they'll alwaysbe the first people that go oh,
we need it to have a humanelement, but their version of
that would be like a pair ofshoes or an open magazine or a
coffee cup.
Yeah, so to kind of get it backinto that slightly more gritty,

(25:17):
what was that fantasticmagazine that used to, um do?
the interviews that were likeyeah yeah, and that too there's
a couple, but like they just didlike raw, you know, like
literally the beds are made andthere's socks on the floor and
just like.
But they felt real andinteresting and layered, and so

(25:38):
I wonder if it'll kind of startto move to that extreme, to kind
of as a backlash of thisperfection that we're seeing.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
So we can leave our dirty socks on the floor, and
it's artful and chic.
Well, my place would be perfect.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah.
But I feel like, yeah, those AIspaces, they are so perfect and
there, you know, there isn'tthat.
Oh, I don't know, but I guessthey can also create the dirty
sock on the floor.
Yeah, you know that's the thingthat copy whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, it's still a human touch to.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
I reckon, though and Tom tell me what you think my
take on the photography versusthe ai version, or even a render
, I suppose is is yes, it's,it's the, it's the element of
where's the little bit that'simperfect, because a
photographer will usually, Imean, for me it's all about the
light and how they capture thatlight, or control that light, or

(26:28):
add, add light, um, and somephotographers like to do that
quite perfectly, but I thinkwhen we looked at people's
styles, it wasn't justcomposition that would play into
it, like the type of light orthat sort of stuff's a bit
harder, I think, to replicate inthe AI and the render world.
So that that's the bit that'simperfect to me.
It's like that's the humantouch of the photographer, is

(26:51):
like their style, which isn'tlike not everyone does it.
Well, I think some people kindof try and copy other people's
styles, so it doesn't maybetranslate as well, and they work
that out, I guess, eventually.
But, um, the good photographershave there's just something
about it, and sometimes evenanother photographer can't quite
replicate it.
What do you think, tom, like amI?

Speaker 2 (27:11):
look.
Yeah, I think I think we allstrive to have our own take on
it and have our images berecognizable outside of you know
, seeing who took it.
I think we strive for that, butI think that AI will be able to
do it.
As I see it at the moment, Ifeel like I'm probably and maybe
the reason why I'm so like whatdo you do?

(27:31):
Ai doesn't really hasn't reallyaffected me, because my clients
need the actual project thatactually exists to be captured,
because, in the end, they wantpublicity, they want to be
published in magazines and theywant to win awards for their
work, and at the moment, theawards judges are only taking
projects that are photographed,even if we're free to touch the

(27:53):
hell out of it And're onlyreally.
Yeah, totally.
You know the gpos are all gone,they're only uh, they're only
really publishing light switchesother than other than the cover
, obviously that we.
Yeah, there's no light switches, there's no, anything.
The, the magazines are reallyonly publishing yeah, uh,
they're only really publishingbuilt work, so that's really the
moat around my industry and mylivelihood is the fact that.

(28:18):
So if those priorities changewhich they very well could if
awards are happy to give awardsto concepts and ideas instead of
actual built executions, thenyeah, I might be in trouble.
So that's kind of how I see thelandscape at the moment.
Is that, as an architecturephotographer who captures real

(28:38):
spaces and I have to be in thatspace to do that I am less under
threat than, say, anadvertising photographer who's
brought together, you know, abunch of strangers to a beach in
mexico at the perfect sunset tomake them look like they're all
friends drinking a beer so Ithink that think that and the
brands will do whatever ischeapest, probably in the end.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
That's the reality, isn't it?
Yeah, that's the reality, youknow.
You did make a point then about.
You know interior designers andarchitects want their projects
to be captured and thenpublished.
However, you know we have seenBell Magazine published their
50th anniversary edition and onthe front cover they used an

(29:21):
artificial intelligence image,and that was, yeah, image
generated using Midjourney, Ibelieve.
So you know it is slowlycreeping in.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, that was a big move from them.
That was, um, I don't I, Iguess it was.
It was also making point thatthey didn't collaborate with an
ai artist or anybody to do it.
It seems like they just pumpedit out in-house.
So that was kind of a real shotfired across the bow, um that
they just, you know, removed,removed the, the creative, you

(29:53):
know, uh, practitioner.
I would have loved to see thatyeah, that was my main thing.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
I've taken as well.
I got, I got the idea of theconcept and and why they did it
in terms of you know, like it'sthe anniversary show and they're
trying to show, I guess whathappens now, like what is the?
latest thing, but they reallyhad a great opportunity to bring
in um a photographer to directit or someone who you know I
guess even someone like yourself, but even someone who hadn't

(30:19):
worked with AI and to get themto sort of help direct what it
should look like in terms of thestyle of how it was captured,
and a stylist or a designer orjust a few creatives to kind of
collaborate on it and show howit can be a fantastic tool.
And instead I feel like theytook that opportunity away from
the creatives and, whilst theconcept was a great idea, I

(30:43):
think it fell flat a little bitfrom the industry's point of
view and then from the consumerpoint of view, because most
consumers, I don't think wouldhave picked up that it was AI at
all, even though they made itreally obvious.
I think their issue is theythen go oh great, this is
amazing.
I love this house.
Who lives there?

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Where is it?

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Like what's this?
Like they want to actually knowand understand the story behind
things.
So when you kind of dosomething that should be real,
it's sort I don't know it fallsflat to me I.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
I also feel like I think you called it a fantastic
tool, but I think that the majorpotential of ai and when I
enjoy it the most is is afantastical tool where you can
create things that you can'tbuild that, you can't yes, that
can't exist, exactly, yeah, andit's been really frustrating for
me to see also that there'sbeen a few AI awards or AI

(31:37):
images that have been awardedphotography prizes, and they're
usually like a black and whiteimage.
That's kind of already.
That photography alreadysuffers from this tendency to
try and you know, appeasecurators that died a hundred
years ago and you know live inthe past of what our medium was,
died a hundred years ago andyou know live in the past of
what our medium was and you knowassume that anything black and

(32:01):
white is art, and I refute that.
And to see images created bythis future technology also
trying to replicate, you know,past a hundred and something
years ago is really frustratingto me because the artists who I
love, who I follow, are creatingthings that, with AI, that are
impossible or incrediblydifficult to create in any other
way in reality, and so I thinkthat it has so much potential as

(32:23):
a kind of mind-bending realitytool to take you down this
rabbit hole.
It's so much more exciting itis, it can make impossible
things that nobody's ever seenbefore, and by having those out
in the world then everybody'stastes kind of get sharpened and
I think that that's the kind oftragic missed opportunity of

(32:45):
using it to try and replicatethings that we've done, things
that we've got, things thatwe've already seen.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Agree, agree.
And then it also feeds itselftoo, right, like so.
I kind of was going to touch onthis before when we were
talking about how you know ittakes you put it really well,
tom, before that it takes like apart of you know everybody's
work, like a tiny piece, andthen brings it all together,
which is kind of what our brainsdo.
Let's face it, we takeeverything in, and then we

(33:14):
reproduce it in our own way whenwe create things, but with AI,
when nothing new is being made,I feel like we can get stuck in
a bit of a loop of it keeps kindof just regurgitating itself,
which is, I think, why we'restarting to see a lot of
same-sameness in the imagerythat's being created, because,

(33:35):
people, if you're just a lameand you don't know how to push
it past that, and if it's onlytaking what exists and we're not
creating new, then we just kindof get stuck in this loop of
kind of just regurgitating thesame thing, which I feel like
we're kind of in a weird era ofdoing that literally because of
capitalism, like you know if youlook at it from the magazine

(33:56):
point of view.
Even that cover, they literallysaid they created the perfect
cover because it's whateverybody said they wanted.
So if we just keep creatingwhat everybody says they want
like right now, because theyalready know that exists, like
that cover or like a bluekitchen or whatever it is that
sales say is popular, then whendoes it start to evolve?

(34:18):
So you still have to havereally creative people taking
control of like this to push itforward.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yeah, I think so.
I think where I love Midjourneyis that I have, I've
voraciously consumed, I've justbeen an internet addict for God
knows how many years, since I,you know, I've just and
especially as a creativephotographer.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Why aren't your?

Speaker 2 (34:38):
eyes square.
Yeah, I've just consumed everyimage that I could possibly get
my eyes on for like the last 15years, you know, on on
photography sites, onphotography books, on Tumblr, on
anywhere I could get it on theinternet, on pinterest, and I am
still constantly seeing thingsthat mid-journey produces that
I've never seen before and theymake me think visually like wow,

(35:02):
that's a, that's a newaesthetic, that's a new thing or
it's such an amazing mix of oldaesthetics.
That it, yeah, it it's stillexciting.
It's some it's also infuriatingand and occasionally disgusting
, but it it's still.
You know, this is probably notgoing to age.
Well, I look not.
No, no hot takes on it on aiever do.

(35:22):
I'll probably look back on thisas I'm, you know, being
enslaved by an ai robot andthink, geez, I probably should
shut the hell up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah well, I onthat one.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, I think that's a really great point, you know,
with the Bell magazine.
I would have loved to see thattwo years ago.
That would have blown my mind,yeah.
So maybe it was a little bit, Idon't know, there was a missed
opportunity in my mind.
But you know, I think it'sgreat that they did something
different and they really goteveryone talking about it.

(35:58):
So that's great too.
I like the idea that you weretalking about the whole
myth-making kind of you knowwith your images, and could you
speak on that a little bit?

Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, I just think it's really interesting.
Yeah, I just think it's reallyinteresting.
It's quite cathartic for me tokind of take the very serious
world of architecture andcapitalism and kind of subvert
it into interesting stories, onethat, sorry, in my what's
Happening is an exhibition ofthree AI artists at the RACV

(36:33):
club in Healesville at themoment, which is going to travel
over a few different venues,and I'm one of them, and so the
work that I'm exhibiting isabout this period in design
where in the 70s and 80s inEurope, there was this tax
rebates for offshore oilcompanies to be able to get tax
rebates to build things reallydeep underwater to build oil

(36:54):
rigs.
But a bunch of kind of richpeople in Monaco and Italy
worked out that they coulduseates to build things really
deep underwater to build oilrigs, but a bunch of kind of
rich people in monaco in italyworked out that they could use
it to build underwater houses,basically for free, and so there
was this whole like golden eraof underwater design, and so I
created this magazine calledlegis, auto imare, which was
like the milanese magazine thatchronicled this whole era of
design, and so and then I kindof created this whole story of

(37:16):
each of the architects andthere's kind of multiple eras of
it was kind of like an initialera where the style was very
kind of baroque, it was calledrenaissance reef and it was.
Everything was quite ornate.
And then there was kind of likea wealth transfer and the new
kids building underwater housesdidn't want their grandparents
underwater house, so they kindof had this new trippy style
that was called op art aquatica,and so everything was really

(37:37):
kind of acid trippy and so andand the point is kind of like,
well, I've got this story andthere's photos of it.
So you know, there's just sortof been this thing for years of
just like if there's photos ofit on the internet it must be
real, and so just kind ofplaying.
But also we know that you knowthere's these magazines and
these books and these thingsthat exist in piles and in boxes

(37:59):
and in basements and in opshops, that these whole you know
things that.
Yeah, that backs it all up.
So I yeah the.
The original myth that I cameup with was that all of the most
famous modernist houses gotrenovated in really hardcore
postmodern style in the 90s andthen it kind of all got restored
and it all got covered up andthat was what I was working on

(38:20):
with with the render artist, mrp, and so that that never saw
the light of day.
But tragically, I really missed.
There was a window when we wereworking in renders where we
could have put that out thereand people would have had no
idea that they really would havetrusted it.
They would have have notbelieved that renders.
You know, nobody knew thatrenders were that good.
Nobody knew that you could makeimages any other way.

(38:42):
I missed this golden window torelease that series you did.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
It's over.
We don't trust anything anymore.
People don't trust.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
No, and nor should you, nor should you.
So now all I can do isprolifically spew out myths
until a few of them just kind ofseed a bit of doubt and also
just enjoyment of the story andthe imagery around it, which is
amazing.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
It's really clever.
Yeah.
What do you think aboutsomebody going onto Midjourney
and creating a image and sayingthat they own the copyright to
that image?

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Oh, such a spicy meatball, this one, sorry.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
I'm just so curious.
I mean, personally I don'tthink they do, but I mean, Well,
it's not been proven yet, hasit?
It's a very great area still, Ibelieve it may.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
I just don't know when, if ever, it's going to
settle.
My gorgeous wife, kateate,actually had a previous life.
Before she was an amazing artistas a copyright lawyer, and so
we are yeah, we are very acrosscopyright in this house, and I
am constantly educating peopleon around the dinner table it's

(39:53):
just uh, we just know what, whatis, what it says, what it does,
and I cannot see any way.
It's just a square peg in around hole.
I cannot really see a way thatthese concepts can marry into
each other AI and the way thatit's produced, the levels of
input and I just can't see howthese things are going to marry

(40:16):
up anytime soon.
Or it'll be like the EU willmake a decision and the US will
make a separate decision andthen a bunch of cases will get
fought.
Disney will get involved at somepoint.
Someone else will get involved,it's going to, and all the
while, we're moving at anexponential pace.
We haven't even started, youknow taking off the curve yet.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Oh my gosh, it's wild pace.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
We haven't even started taking off the curve yet
.
There's also people.
There's an American guy who isfighting for his AI that he
created to be able to own thefull copyright.
So he's against what mostartists might want for
themselves commercially, whichis for me to be able to
copyright the stuff that Icreate so that maybe I can have
more protection of it.
But he is going the other wayand trying to say no, this robot
is you know, this is alive,this made the thing, this owns

(40:59):
the copyright solely andentirely.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
I wondered if there was any cases like that.
So there is a case currently.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
He's going hard, yeah he's.
He's investing a lot ofresources in fighting the US
Copyright Council, or CopyrightAuthority.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
And the thing is, if that happens, obviously it's
American-based, but it willcreate precedent right, and so
then it becomes a whole thing.
Probably not the decisions thatget made.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
It just keeps flipping and backflipping and
flipping back, and I think itwill continue to do so.
And so I mean, look, the otherthing to keep in mind is that,
unless you're Disney, copyrightis really just a game of who
wants to go to court and spendthe most money.
You know, it's not really likethere's not the copyright police
who turn up at your door andyou know, shut it down or tear

(41:45):
it down or burn it down.
It's.
It just becomes another legalavenue of wasting of resources.
You know, similar to how peopleuse defamation.
It's just whoever, whoever'sgot the most money will probably
win, or whoever wants to tapout first.
So the way that I treatcopyright is, you know, for my
images I enforce my copyright inall of my photographic images

(42:07):
and with ai it's kind of like Ijust got to keep moving so fast,
kind of like tom dixon'sapproach.
You know that he got copied sovoraciously by you know by fakes
, that he just puts out newamazing stuff every year and
that's his strategy is just keepmoving faster than they can
copy you and so Outrun them.
Yeah, you got to outrun them,yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
I feel like you know there's, you know, people
wanting to copyright something.
They've just thought on a whimin mid journey of just thought
on a whim in mid-journey, butyou've got like a whole concept
and you've got like a story andlike a whole backstory about
your images, almost like that'sa whole other concept that could
be copyrighted in its own right.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, it's potentially more.
I don't know the copyright laws, but yeah, Look it may have.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
I guess it's the same with any art, though, isn't it,
that has, like, an idea and aconcept behind it?

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Well, an idea and a concept behind it that well, I
guess most art requires a humaninto a level of human
intervention to be eligible forcopyright, that you need to have
done enough as a human toaffect the creation of something
in order for it to be eligible,and so that's.
The problem is that thethreshold at the moment is just
not being met because you know,realistically it's, it's
confronting, but you are, you'remining this infinite liminal
space of infinite universes ofimages and just it's more of a

(43:21):
mining thing.
You're going looking for thesenuggets of gold in this infinite
.
You know billions of trillionsof images that could exist and
would exist world, and you'rebringing back what you know, you
think of the nuggets to takewith you.
You're not creating them in thesame way that I would for a
work that I fly across the worldto photograph, and so that is

(43:45):
confronting for some people andit leads some people to really
lean into skill worship, whichis something that I'm not that
into.
I love the skills that I haveand I would be sad if
photographic skills died out andno one could do it, but I love
creating images and I loveseeing amazing images, and so,
if you know, it's what's goingto happen.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
I'd also like to think that it's a new skill that
is being created, right?
I mean sometimes if somethingit's more of maybe an evolution
of skill rather than adisappearing skill.
But I wanted, to go back to theawards thing, because I'm
really fascinated with that.
You know, like photographyawards, and I've seen that

(44:27):
there's been.
You know, ai images winphotography awards and I'm
fascinated by the fact that.
Is it still considered to bephotography?
It's not really, is it?
So how does that work?
Like I don't get that.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
There's been a few cases of it.
In the first case it was reallyearly mid-journey and it was
not disclosed that the image wasAI.
And then, once it was, therewas quite a bit of backlash.
There was another case where aguy got it in to win to prove a
point, but then revealed it ashe won and kind of didn't want

(45:02):
to take the award yeah, um, sowe are, but then some some
competition is going too far.
There's a photographic award fora western Australian
institution that says that wecan't even use generative fill
and photoshop to remove a lightswitch or anything like that.
So even if you shot it on filmand scanned it and you want to
use that to take 10 pixels away,they've gone completely that

(45:25):
direction.
We are finding the Bonas Prize,which is one of the premier
Victorian photographic awards,got a $30,000 prize and has been
going for many years.
They are trying to find abalance by saying you know, if
you are using elements of AI aspart of your process, you can
tell us about that and we'llconsider it, but if your entire

(45:46):
process is AI, my images wouldnot be eligible, because I,
strangely, I'm not mixing thetwo.
I'm trying.
I'm definitely muddying my ownwaters a bit, but I'm trying to
keep my photographic works asthey are and uh and AI works as
a separate thing.
Not that I'm, you know, reallydelineating it on my Instagram,
but I, in my mind, I'm notblending the two concepts yeah,

(46:09):
okay, yeah, and is that what itneeds to be with those?

Speaker 1 (46:13):
So the awards that I would have seen weren't created
specifically in AI.
They're a combination ofphotography and AI.
Is that how they sort of sit inthose?

Speaker 2 (46:22):
No, they were.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
I mean in the cases that have made headlines.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
They've been 100%.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
AI Fully created.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
They've been fully AI , but they've just been people
kind of trying to prove a pointby putting these images in and
showing.
And that you can't tell thedifference, kind of thing I mean
, god, looking back at the firstone that won, when you see it
now, it just looks it was midjourney, version three.
Everything was super scrawlyand weird it.
But you know, it's like when wegrew up with video games and

(46:48):
you're like, wow, it's sorealistic, it's never been
better.
And then you look back andthink, wow, that is blocky crap,
you know.
And it's same with when you goback and use an old smartphone.
You're like, and this is slow.
You know, we're getting faster,we're getting sharp and our, our
standards and our tastes changeall the time and, I guess, the
speed of everything.
So, yeah, looking back, theyseemed pretty obvious.

(47:09):
But yeah, I think awards aregonna have a tough time finding
the balance of.
I think the bonus probablystrikes at the best.
They just say you can use it,tell us how you used it, we'll
work out whether we think thatthat still makes you eligible or
not.
And it's on a case by casebasis and I think that's, you
know, laborious, but probablythe best approach.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
I really like what you were saying then about um,
using ai to really refine yourtaste, because, um, when I first
jumped onto, I think the firstone I used was dali and I was
like this is revolting yeah,images are so disgusting, what
is everyone?
Going on about yeah, and then Iwent on to mid journey.
I was like okay, this looks abit better, but um, you know it

(47:52):
does take a lot of uh, you know,not a lot, but a bit better.
But you know it does take a lotof, you know, not a lot, but a
bit of trial and error to getsomething in the aesthetic that
you like.
So how do you think AI couldhelp, or how has it helped you?
You know, evolve your taste.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
Yeah, it's been a wild journey.
I mean, I think that there'sanother thing at play.
Is that, psychologically, whenyou're looking at other people's
work, it's guiding you.
It's this kind of layer of youknow do you like them, do you
want to like them, do you notlike them, do you admire them,
do you hate them?
I think that whenever you'relooking at other people's work
which is, you know,realistically, people's work, is

(48:28):
what we've been doing, you know, on pinterest, when you're
looking at interiors, is it?
You know, a studio demarioproject, do love them.
You know it guides how youinterpret that, how you kind of
compartmentalize that image inyour head, whereas when you're
using Midjourney, it's creatinghundreds of images that I'm just
responding to on a totalimpulse basis and loving it,

(48:51):
hating it, loving it, hating it.
And you know something thatamazed me today doesn't amaze me
anymore, you know tomorrow, andI think that that's good.
I think that, for me, myartistic process has been to
create a huge amount of imagesand try and learn from them.
And if I can't look back at aphoto I took five years ago and
think of 10 ways that I would doit better than I, haven't

(49:13):
learned anything, and so, yeah,I think it's just been a really
interesting exercise to look atimages and think about do I like
it, why do I like it, what'sthe composition?
But I'm doing that in a quarterof a second, as fast as I can,
to just ingest and ride thisstrange wave of overwhelm and
disgust and boredom andexcitement, of overwhelm and

(49:35):
disgust and boredom andexcitement, and it's a journey.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
It is not a mid-journey, it is, it's a max
journey.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
Yeah, it's a max journey.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Nothing mid about it.
Oh my God, you know it's soweird because I think when I
first started and you know,using these image generation
kind of AI, it was like you know, it's really great, it's a
blank canvas so you can startcreating images.
And then I started using it.
I'm like actually it's not ablank canvas for me.
Anyway, I need to have my ideasfirst, I need to have you know

(50:03):
with my prompts.
I have like a course on this forinterior designers because I
really love to you know other,mostly women in the course, but
I really love empowering womento use AI, because I know it can
feel kind of scary and, and youknow, you go on to mid-journey
and, to be fair, like within twoseconds, there's some Star Wars
reference image or Supermanthat pops up.

(50:23):
I'm like, oh my God, what theheck is this?
Can we just like help balancethis out a bit?
But you know, it's just, youneed to have your own tastes
first.
You can't let it dictate to youyour taste.
So you know when you're usingyour prompts, you know who are
your favorite designers what eraof architecture and what I've
found really fun is that mashupas well.
Like you know, those unexpectedworlds coming together and it's

(50:47):
creating something so weird andcool and it's just fun and like
apologies in advance for anybodywho's signing up to mid journey
right now and you'll, you knowyou'll be at your keyboard at
one o'clock in the morning, likeit can get pretty addictive, um
, but yeah it can it's really itis really weird, it's really
fun it is, I would say that,actually the newer algorithms,

(51:10):
version 6 and 6.1, I I don't,I'm not really, I don't like
them at all.
I'm, I'm a version 5.2 guy yeah,and it's can you choose which
version you use?
Can you go back?

Speaker 2 (51:22):
yeah, you can yeah, you can roll back, yeah, you can
roll back just photographicallythey look over processed they
yeah, it's got some weirdphotographic styles that are not
particularly reversible orworkable.
Those images are just brokenfrom the start and if I tried to
work with them they would justfall apart.
So, um, I think it's alsoreally interesting an exercise

(51:43):
that I've done a few times.
That is kind of controversial.
If I've got somebody who's kindof like you can't put in a
designer's name, then you'rejust, you know, ripping them off
, and part of copyright, um, isthat there's no copyright in a
style.
So so I think that's a reallyimportant thing to say from the
outset that no one's ever beenable to copyright a style.
So if you've got a recognizablestyle, that's never been able
to be copyrighted.

(52:03):
But something that I like to dois show people this prompt where
I type a postmodern building byMichael Graves.
And so Michael Graves was agreat architect and prolific
designer, but he only builtabout eight or 10 buildings.
So I can have them up on ascreen.
Google will show you everysingle realized Michael Graves
building.
And then you start producingall these wacky postmodern
buildings that are totallybonkers and wild.

(52:25):
None of them look like thoseMichael Graves buildings.
And if I said to Michael Graveshey, did you build this and do
you like this?
He'd say no, that's terrible,that's not even my style.
So it's like where's theproblem, you know?
if somebody wants to put a photoin the style of Tom Blatchford.
It's not going to get tosomewhere that I would think is
actually close enough for it tobe a problem, and so I don't

(52:46):
know.
I think there's a lot ofdiscourse of people who maybe
haven't produced a huge amountof stuff that might be in the
data set and are assuming whatit might feel like.
But personally, very personally, my thoughts of having a lot of
my work that's recognizable inthe data set and producing a
huge amount of work is thatthere is no real correlation in
terms of stepping on my toes.

(53:07):
It's not good at producingstuff that looks like mine, so I
go and produce stuff that lookstotally new of how I want
images to look.
So yeah, I guess that's theonly thing is the people that I
find are most enraged about AIhave not used it very much at
all and don't understand how itworks.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
That is funny, isn't it?
Yeah, you just need to jump onit.
It would be a lot of assumption.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
I think A lot yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
I found it really interesting, Lauren, how you
were bringing up I think we'vetalked about this before that
you've got predominantly womenin your courses, but that we've
seen time and time again how AIleaves women out of things or
puts women into things that arevery typical, like show parents
playing at a park, and it'lljust show women.
And the other day I was muckingaround with something you can
now do like backgrounds in chatsin Instagram with AI and just
create your own, and I wrotesomething like you know 40
something women and they lookedlike 70 year olds and I'm like,
well, that's great, that's whatthe perception is, and and then.
I tried to find somewhere inbetween and it would only give

(54:14):
me like, let's say, 20 year olds, like really young women or
women who looked much older, andput in 50 and you get like full
grandma effect and I'm like,well, that's not the 50 year
olds I know.
So it's just funny how I guessthere's a bias to a lot of,
isn't there?

Speaker 2 (54:31):
there's so much bias.
It's, it's the bias is a bigproblem.
The bias towards theEnglish-speaking world, which is
only going to get worse becausemost of the data set was
English-speaking.
The bias towards, you know,stereotypes and you know unfair
portrayal and misrepresentation.
There's a lot of problems.
You know Huge amounts ofpotential and current actual

(54:53):
problems with, with ai, that is,you know, uh, many, many
podcasts unto itself.
So I guess, as we, you know,sit here extolling its virtues,
there's obviously a a dark sideto it.
Um, you know, I've, even if youtype in a portrait of an
architect, it pretty much justgives you men.
Oh, it's all men, I've done allof those fun exercises, ted

(55:15):
Talks, all men in blackturtlenecks.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
Yeah, yeah, you know but I read this book by Tracy
Spicer called man Made.
You know she's a journalist.
Yeah, and that was reallyfascinating and it's about AI
and how I guess all of thosebiases are coming out about.
Ai and how I guess all of thosebiases are coming out.
So I suppose I felt so enraged,annoyed about it, that I was
like right.

(55:38):
Come on, women, let's gettogether Like, let's just, in
our tiny, tiny, minuscule way,just at least give it a go, put
some beautiful imagery intoMidjourney to help train it
towards something a bit morebeautiful than what I was seeing
in there.
It's just so much garbage.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
I know, yeah, that is the brilliant thing, you can do
, though, sorry, I was going tosay you can train it, though
right, I don't know.
You can train your own models,but it's a much nerdier affair.
Your journey is not reallytaking that much on board.
You've got to then get to somevery nerdy levels to be training
your own, your own data set.

(56:17):
But it's possible.
It's, it's possible, but timedefinitely time consuming yeah
well, um, everybody that'slistening.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
We're actually not even real.
We are just ai robots.
It's been talking to you thiswhole time.
No, just kidding, just kidding,we're real, we're real.
But I mean, this is where it'sgoing as well.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
Well, this is what they are.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
I know right, we're probably just living in the
matrix.
The evolution's alreadyhappened of AI taking over and
we're not able to you know.
So do you have any you knowideas of where AI, in terms of
image generation, will go TomAnywhere, anybody?

Speaker 2 (56:55):
wants it to.
I think it will just be able todo anything you want it to very
precisely pretty soon.
I mean, we're already prettymuch there.
With a few tweaks, you canpretty much get it to make
whatever you want, and so itwill be able to generate an
image of anything that you want,whether it's something that
should exist or not.

(57:17):
And yeah, we're going to have todeal with the repercussions of
that.
That is going to be our nextdecade of trying to work out
what is left that is authenticand how to verify what we're
seeing.
So that's a scary time to bealive, and the persuasion that
AI will be able to have is thekind of next frontier of how

(57:38):
much AI can persuade us to dothings.
So yeah that's going to be abit scary.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
I've always sort of thought that AI can be like it
can either save humanity or itcould be our greatest downfall.
I really feel like there's thissort of moment that's going to
happen where, and because it ismoving so fast and I think
there's so many people that justdon't understand its
capabilities that there's a lotof just people just kind of
going along unaware while a lotof other people are kind of

(58:06):
working on this in thebackground.
And if we have the wrong peopleworking on the wrong things, it
could be quite grave forhumanity.
But if we have the right peopleworking on the wrong things, it
could be quite grave forhumanity.
But if we have the right peopleworking on the right things, it
could solve so many problems.
Like, the potential is amazingbut it's quite scary.
Without we don't know, there'sno way to tell.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
The scary part is humans wielding AI.
I think it'll get to a pointwhere it's going to be smart
enough to just, you know, dealwith us as like a cute little
ant in its universe.
That's mostly irrelevant to it.
I think the smartest personthat's ever lived maybe had an

(58:44):
IQ around 200, and ChatGPT-5 isalready over, I think 300 or 400
.
And so we're exponentiallygoing up from that over I think
three or four hundred.
And so we're exponentiallygoing up from that in.
Within a few years we'll havean ai that is, you know, ten
thousand or a hundred thousandor a million iq.
That's smarter than everyperson that ever lived.
And so that's when thepersuasion thing becomes a
problem.
If you can, uh, if you, ifeverything awful we've ever done

(59:05):
in all of the human history wasby being told stories by mostly
probably men, um, you know,with an iq of less than 200, who
could convince us to doanything shitty that we've ever
heard of, then what happens when, you know, we encounter a being
that is infinitely smarter thanany of those people?

Speaker 1 (59:23):
And we don't know, you don't know.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
And we're all using.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
AI If you choose not to, or you do, you're using it
Like we don't even know in theways it's's using you.
Yeah, messing with us?
Oh, it's totally using us yeahbut we love you ai, so don't
come after us robots yeah, wecould.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
I'm always very polite to chat gpt.
I say please and thank you sodo I.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
Is that funny when we use our manners.
I'm like, I'm like, oh, thatsounded a bit demanding.
I'll just soften that with abit of a.
Please here, so many goodthings to unpack um what else do
we want to touch on?
I think that's on that note ofdoom and gloom.
Can we, can we end on apositive?
hopefully well, um, tom, so wecan see your work on your

(01:00:08):
instagram account, which youmentioned before, but there's
also the restaurant and you'vegot an exhibition that's going
to tour.
So at the moment it's atHealesville, but what was it
called again?

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
It's at the RACV Club at Healesville and it's going
to tour.
I guess across a couple moreVictorian RACV Club venues that
I can't remember right now.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Oh, that's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
But it is going to be around.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
We'll put the info up .
That's all good, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
And I'm also working towards a show of AI stuff which
will open next month.
But it's a little privategallery so I'm not sure how it
will get out to everybody in theworld, but I'll try and find an
opportunity.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
Well, let's look forward to it.
Yeah, for them to get out there.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
So that's a new body of work which is all gold
inspired, so that's going to bequite fun.
You can say that on myinstagram, so I'll be sharing it
there, and I'm working on abook of my japan series, nihon
noir, which I shot over the last, uh, eight years, and so that's
coming out in april and that'sgoing to be a beautiful coffee
table book and hopefully we'llbe yeah, so hopefully that'll be
available.
Yeah, so hopefully that will beavailable everywhere and I'm
excited about that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Oh, I'm excited.
Oh, I can't wait to see that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
That's great I love a good book.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, me too.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Thanks, tom.
Well, we're going to wrap thepodcast here, but hang around,
and if you want to hear somemore from Tom, that's slightly
more personal tom, that'sslightly more personal.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
That'll be on youtubers and bonus content, but
um thanks tom, thanks forhaving me cheers.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
So, um, thank you guys for listening in.
And just a quick reminder ifyou would like some help with
the interiors for your own home,I can help you in a course
called the style studiesessentials, or um, for designers
out there, come into the designsociety for business and
marketing and all of the things.
Yeah, and in the same shownotes you'll find a link to sign

(01:02:01):
up for my soon to be releasedfurniture collections,
pre-selected furniturecollections and cool trend
information, and then, in thefuture, some short courses on
styling and trends as well.
So, good Bree, we've got theutmost respect for the
Wurundjeri people of the KulinNation.
They're the OG custodians ofthis unceded land and its waters
, where we set up shop, createand call home and come to you.

(01:02:25):
From this podcast today, a bigshout out to all of the amazing
elders who have walked before us, those leading the way in the
present and the emerging leaderswho will carry the torch into
the future.
We're just lucky to be on thisjourney together.