The large digital camera producers have remained fairly quiet in regards to the rise of AI picture turbines like Midjourney thus far, however Nikon has now damaged cowl, with a marketing campaign that encourages a return to “pure intelligence” in pictures.

As noticed by Little Black Ebook and Petapixel, a intelligent Nikon Peru marketing campaign reveals a succession of beautiful real-world pictures, on that are superimposed the AI prompts which may have impressed them, had they been AI-generated. 

The marketing campaign, which options the tagline “Do not quit on the actual world”, has been designed to steal again the pictures limelight from AI picture turbines, which have dominated the headlines this yr – although there are many issues the likes of Midjourney and Dall-E nonetheless cannot do.

Whereas it is the sort of argument you’d anticipate to listen to from one of many world’s greatest digital camera producers – Nikon nonetheless sits third in world digital camera market share, behind Sony and Canon – it’ll additionally ring a bell with conventional photographers.

As Nikon Peru states in its promo video “this obsession with the substitute is making us overlook that our world is stuffed with wonderful pure locations which can be typically stranger than fiction”. 

This AI revolution is seemingly having real-world penalties, with Nikon Peru including that “thousands and thousands of individuals all over the world are producing surreal photographs simply by coming into a number of key phrases on a web site, which is straight affecting photographers, particularly in locations with fewer assets”. These locations embrace Latin America, the place editorial and promoting photographers are “dropping area, work and earnings”, Nikon provides.

The AI backlash begins

The flipside to Nikon’s argument is that AI picture turbines – significantly these which can be educated on pictures that is been licensed from creators, like Adobe Firefly – are opening up dramatic panorama ‘pictures’ to new audiences who cannot afford to journey to distant locations with costly digital camera gear.

However Nikon clearly feels that, moderately than co-existing with conventional pictures, AI picture turbines might considerably hit the demand for real-world pictures, and it is seen this occur already.

Nonetheless you’re feeling about AI picture era, Nikon’s marketing campaign is the primary vital backlash from one of many main digital camera producers – and is a properly executed one, too. For instance, a photograph of Iceland’s Reynisfjara seaside (above) is given the mock AI immediate “a sensible Minecraft cliff on the seashore in winter season”.

In one other photograph, which you’ll see increased up the web page, the Coyote Buttes cliffs in Arizona, USA are described of their AI immediate as “a latte skatepark in the course of the desert in Mars”.

In fact, AI and cameras additionally aren’t essentially polar opposites – there are a number of examples of the methods AI is remodeling how conventional cameras work, from more and more good autofocus to improved picture processing. So the way forward for pictures is probably one in all peaceable co-existence between the 2 instruments, moderately than deathmatch between Midjourney and Nikon.