Photography and traditional art forms in 2025 are changing rapidly. Since AI tools became available to the public and creative software developers started integrating AI, there has been an explosion of new possibilities to discover. For the first time in history we can write our visions into reality with a few keystrokes, and edit images with an unsettling amount of accuracy. This is arguably the biggest technological advancement in the arts since the beginning of the mechanical age in the 1890s.

For both professionals and enthusiasts in the art world AI tools are changing the way we create every day and evolving our standards for purely acceptable and the exceptional quality in our work. For photographers like myself, complex edits that once took hours now take mere minutes. For many of us, this has changed our entire workflow. Some photographers are finding galleries are much simpler to edit and delivery times are shortened. And for art photographers like me who painstakingly fine tune every detail until it meets my satisfaction, AI tools have freed up time. I now spend less energy on obscure corrections and more on shaping the larger vision of each piece.

This new technology has caused a number of growing concerns. Some examples that have been brought up are copyright infringement concerns surrounding whether AI has been trained using copyrighted material, and academic concerns over cheating. The biggest and most complex issue with AI art to date however is whether AI art is actually considered art.

The debate over AI art is that, since the piece’s creator didn’t physically create the piece as you’d see in more traditional mediums, is it art — or just something that a computer generated? Another concern some artists have brought up is whether AI art essentially has a soul, since it was created by a computer. This has had artists in hot debate for the past few years.

This isn’t the first time however that artists have been at odds with one another.In 1935, a Jewish critical theorist and philosopher named Walter Benjamin wrote and published an essay titled “The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction”. An essay that examined how advancements in technology at the time ( photography and video becoming more accessible and reliable) were affecting traditional art and how art was evolving for both the positive and the potential negatives.

Walter Benjamin’s main arguments in this essay were that the mass reproduction of art causes it to lose its aura and to a degree its authenticity. When an artwork loses its aura it loses what makes it special, its meaning and power. For example, viewing one of Tom Thomson’s original pieces in person does not have the same effect as it does viewing it in a digital format or even printed in a book.

In his essay, Walter Benjamin defined aura as “the unique and authentic presence of a work of art, rooted in its physical and temporal location”. In simpler terms, this means a work of art displayed in its original format, in its original location, as it was intended by the artist. This creates a unique presence that cannot be replicated when the piece is reproduced and displayed in other formats and locations.

When discussing authenticity he defined it more broadly as “The uniqueness of a work of art is tied to its presence in time and space; its ‘authenticity’ is inseparable from its being in the world.” By this he means the time and place in the world a work of art is created defines how it is understood conceptually. Taking it out of that space can change its interpretation and therefore its meaning. An example of this concept is that ancient statues now seen in museums do not hold the same cultural or religious significance today as they did in the time of their creation.

Mechanical reproduction changed the way people in 1935 viewed and experienced art.

Instead of having to travel to see famous works of art (which was often costly), people could now see them in photographs, films, or printed in books, flyers, and even exhibited in smaller galleries. Newspapers also began slowly replacing drawings with photographs in their pages, and this meant people were seeing what was described instead of a depiction. Stage plays were also now able to be captured on film and broadcast in theaters all over the world. This shift meant that entirely new audiences were being exposed to art in ways previous generations had not experienced, affecting people’s perspectives in both positive and complex ways.

While acknowledging the positives of mechanical reproduction, Benjamin argued that this newfound reproducibility was causing art to lose its aura and authenticity. In his opinion, this was causing art to become just another part of capitalism. He also warned that making art so easily reproducible opened it up to political manipulation.

Just like the mechanical shift of the late 1800s, in the present day we’re facing a similar artistic shift. AI has very literally begun reshaping photography and digital art since it became widely available to the public in early 2023.

Earlier, I touched on some of the issues surrounding AI art that are hotly debated, so let’s explore them more in depth.

The first issue is copyright infringement. Since AI generates images based on the descriptors it’s given, a lot of artists have concerns on what material the AI models were trained on, since over the past few years there have been multiple cases where AI generated art has generated pieces that look undeniably similar to copyrighted pieces of artwork or an artists unique style. In some rarer cases AI generated actual copyrighted elements of other artists work such as buildings, animals etc since it creates unique work based on the prompts rather than create a collage from stock images. For example in a 2022 business insider article, Greg Rutkowski, an artist with a unique style that frequently creates fantasy battle scenes that large game creators such as Dungeons and Dragons have used started seeing new artwork in his own style that he didn’t create. In his own words he said that it used to be “really rare to see a similar style to mine on the internet.” He started noticing images on Twitter and being tagged in images that looked a lot like his work, except he hadn’t created them. After some investigation he discovered AI generating software was being prompted to create image based on his style, a popular prompt would be something roughly along the lines of “create a painting based on the style of Greg Rutkowski”. In the article Greg speaks on the ethics of this, saying “people are pretending to be me”, “I’m very concerned about it; it seems unethical.”

The ethics surrounding the training of AI tools is complex, on one hand information on the internet is allowed to be used in an educational capacity as long as it’s not being reproduced or sold or used in any manner that violates the creators copyright. Without AI undoubtedly having been trained in some capacity with copyrighted material we wouldn’t see it at the level it is at today. On the other hand though, creators absolutely should have the right to disallow their work from being used to teach AI, especially when it has the capacity to appropriate their work so blatantly, essentially stealing an artist or creators unique niche. Software developers like Adobe have addressed this stating that they do not use any customer material to train Firefly (Adobe’s AI) and that they only train using stock and licensed content as well as content that is now public domain.

With AI becoming so good at creating content, including written work, educational institutions now face the challenge of distinguishing original work from copyrighted or AI-generated content, also known academically as plagiarism. While AI detection software exists, its results are still mediocre at best. From my own experiments, these detectors often flag my original writing as partially AI-generated, or misidentify basic grammatical elements, like the use of articles, as evidence of AI involvement.

This leads into the last and most controversial topic, simpler AI generated pieces are becoming nearly impossible to differentiate from human works of art. So will we reach a time when AI art is truly considered and accepted as a category of fine art and should it be?

The most prominent and clear argument for whether AI art should be considered art comes from a Plymouth University article that presents both the arguments for and against considering AI art as art. I recommend reading this article yourself to gain the insight, but in short the author states that in the for case

AI art can still move and inspire
Algorithms can learn and develop skills like humans
AI art is a reflection of contemporary society
AI art is a blend of art history
Artificial intelligence is meant to improve people’s lives
There are still limits to AI art technology
Artists working with AI are not worried about being replaced

The author goes on to argue the opposite point, that

AI lacks emotions that create art
AI art isn’t original
AI art lacks a dialogue with other values that inspire artists
It can be difficult to replicate the same results twice
It can’t come up with new ideas
AI art may not be ethical
and AI art complicates copyright

These issues surrounding AI do not have a right or wrong answer; rather, they are complex topics that deserve careful research and attention. Reading Walter Benjamin’s essay over the past year really hit home, his interest and wariness of the new technology of his time, photography and film, and his ever-growing concerns over what he felt was being lost and changed, show blatant parallels to our own artistic conundrums in 2025. Walter Benjamin’s argument of the loss of aura and authenticity stays with me even today, and while I cannot answer whether we lose more than we gain by accepting or denying AI in modern art, I encourage all artists and art enthusiasts to read, research, and keep your minds open.

As a fine art photographer based in Muskoka, I’ve witnessed firsthand how new technologies are shaping the way we create and experience art. While AI tools are transforming how we approach both landscapes and portraiture, I remain rooted in the values that have always defined my work, especially when it comes to capturing the timeless beauty of places like Algonquin Park. I strive to blend cutting-edge techniques with a deep respect for nature and authenticity in every shot. If you’re curious about how this philosophy translates into my landscape and fine art photography, I invite you to explore my Fine Art Photography galleries. The art of photography continues to evolve, and I’m honored to be part of that journey in Muskoka and beyond.

Deanna Wagg Photography

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Walter Benjamin and the Future of Fine Art Photography in the Age of AI