Thoughts About
AI Generated Images and Fires
Gray Headed Flying Fox, Portrait, Victoria, Australia
This has been on my mind for a while. Since it's 43°C (109°F) outside with ferrocious winds of 110 kmh (68 mph), 11% humidity, more than 40 bushfires burning in Victoria, and dozens of small towns told to evacuate, I've got nothing better to do than write about it. Writing helps me to organize and solidify my thoughts, and not think about the potential loss of life and places I've never seen. Otherwise this essay will benefit no one, which is roughly the number of people I expect to see it.
A photograph is an image created by recording light on a light-sensitive surface, such as photographic film or an electronic sensor. The word is derived from the Greek words phos ("light") and graphê ("drawing" or "writing"), together meaning "drawing with light". Photographs contain images, as do paintings, drawings, and works generated by AI (Artificial Intelligence), but photographs are the only images drawn with light. The light is typically reflected by the surroundings and focused on a light-sensitive surface by a lens in a device commonly called a camera.
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. Image creation by other means is not photography, and does not create photographs, but those other means can create images that appear to be photographs. Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. When the desired output is accurately described verbally or in text, AI can produce masterful photorealistic works.
A quick Internet search can find a smattering of diverse facts showing the current scope of AI use. For instance:
Roughly 71% of all images shared on social media globally are AI-generated.
An estimated 34 million new AI-generated images are created every day. Over 15 billion AI-generated images have been created since 2022 across various platforms.
As of May 2025, AI-generated images made up nearly half of the total portfolio on Adobe Stock.
Due to the exponential growth in adoption, one AI expert predicted that 90% of all internet content could be AI-generated by sometime in 2025.
The quality of generated images is constantly improving. Currently, those who use AI tools can't determine whether an image is generated by a camera or AI roughly half the time.
One consequence is that AI has changed my initial reaction to every image I see. I first wonder if what I'm looking at ever physically existed. Beyond that, if it's a wildlife image I'm not sure if the animal lives in the environment shown, or if it's there because someone, or some AI server, thought it looked good there. Landscape images from places I've never seen could be totally contrived or very real, and there is no easy way to tell the difference.
Another consequence of is that I see much less value in every image I view, regardless of its content or origin. A given image may have required years of effort by a talented and knowledgeable photographer along with a bunch of luck, or it may have taken a half hour for a kid who doesn't own a camera to create it on a computer. Looking at all images as only pretty pictures and assigning value commensurate only with their prettiness, the images created by the kid could easily be the most valuable. This is what happens when veracity imparts no value, or cannot be easily determined.
I used to view many of images online and in other venues, but now I seldom bother. I once went to see most new exhibits at the Museum of Australian Photography, around 15 minutes away, but I haven't gone for over a year. I am sure the photographs they display are not generated or altered by AI, unless there is a statement to the contrary. Regardless, knowing that nearly anyone could produce similar images with little effort saps my enthusiasm. I can't imagine why anyone outside a given photographer's personal bubble would be keenly interested in their work. Certainly each photographer has their own personal vision, interpretation, techniques and such, but it is all lost in the avalanche of countless billions of pretty AI generated images. Regardless of the source, pretty images are everywhere and produced in quantities beyond comprehention. Adding a few more is pointless, like adding a few grains of sand to a beach.
Thankfully, within one's personal bubble things are basically unchanged. I still value my own images because they bring back memories of real experiences that belong only to me, and in some cases a few others within my personal bubble. I still enjoy the exploration and experiences that go along with capturing them. I would not expect anyone without my memories and experiences to value my photographs more than they'd value others that are comparably pretty. I'm not naive enough to think my photographs can be prettier than AI generated or altered images that are created solely to be pretty.
Going slightly further, AI generated images and videos can obviously be used to manipulate public opinion and create false narratives based on their content. The time when we no longer know what is real arrived years ago. This too happens when veracity has no value.
Dean
January 11, 2026 Update:
Sometime before I woke up at 4am on the morning after I wrote the above essay, a state of disaster was declared in Victoria. The lightening and thunder with no rain that awoke me many times overnight continued until about 5am, when just a few widely spaced raindrops fell. People are missing, homes are burned, and there are 60 new fires burning, making the total more than 80. Some fires are still so fierce they are generating their own weather. In our lucky corner of this lucky country, I awoke to find the air was, at long last, cool and fresh. By 6:30am I was smelling smoke, that evening the smell was strong and the air was hazy. On a government emergency phone app, dozens of nearby fires, between ten and thirty minutes from home, were one by one reported and extinguished. The previous three days were hot and horrible, but today we have clean air and the high temperature is forecast to be only 15°C (65°F). National parks I've never seen in the eastern mountains are burning, as are some favorite places to the west. Reports now say these are the worst fires since the "black summer" of 2019 / 2020.
Things are still evolving, and probably will be for quite a while. Fires like these can burn nearly all summer, as did one last summer that devastated Gramipans National Park.
Real fires have a way of making the ramifications of artificial intelligence seem insignificant.