A question came up during my recent PPA portrait photography workshop. A attendee asked “What do you say to potential clients who bring up AI headshots as a pretty good cheap option? How do you convince them to go with you?”. And while the answer I gave (“Those clients really don’t contact me and I wouldn’t try to convince them anyway.”) is still my perfectly valid answer, I thought it was worth diving into this very relevant topic, especially since headshots seem to be one of the hardest hit photography genres when it comes to AI replacement.
What actually are AI headshots?
While I’m certainly no expert and am impressed with anyone who can keep up with the whirlwind of nonstop AI updates we seem to experience on a daily basis, there’s no denying that AI headshots have gotten to a point where they look pretty damn good. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Technology will keep advancing and anyone who thinks we can reject to see the progress is denying themselves an honest look at what’s actually happening.
And AI is useful! For us as photographers, it can make our lives infinitely easier, simpler, and better. We have AI retouching tools. AI background removal. AI generative fill in Photoshop. AI can help us.. it’s only when it goes beyond being a tool and reaches into replacing us as photographers that we feel incredibly uneasy with it.
Photographers have rallied agains technological advancement as long as I can remember (anyone remember the DSLR transition?) - but AI is different.
While different AI headshot apps work differently, most of the time the client will send a variety of photos to the AI, which will then output some pretty damn good headshots for a really cheap price. There’s less friction, less cost, less time, and less effort from the client’s point of view. And the resulting images look good enough to use - they look realistic and polished - and the laughable early AI headshot attempts that gave client plenty of reasons to use a real photographer no longer apply.
AI is primed to take the photographer out of the process of creating headshots completely. And I, for one, am not going to tell you that there’s some magical phrase we can use to convince our clients that they still need us. Not only that, but also that they should pay us a considerable amount of money for that privilege. That’s simply not how the real world works.
There is only one way to handle this.. and that’s to provide something that AI can’t.
There are still some limitations to what AI can do today.
But AI is still limited. There’s the size restrictions - usually low resolution at around 1024 pixels square, but I do wonder how long that will last. So clients who need billboards or larger sized images will still need to work with a real photographer, at least one would hope! (don’t get me started on people’s inability to see how bad the quality of an AI generated file actually is).
Perfectly symmetrical faces. Humans very rarely have symmetrical features.. so when you use an AI model that’s heavily trained on stock photos or faces of models, you’re going to potentially lose some defining characteristics. Not to mention the fact that we are innately trained as humans to read faces and process micro-expressions to gather cues that form our judgements about the person we’re looking at. Millions of years of evolution won’t disappear overnight. So that slight unease you feel looking at that headshot (even if you’re not 100% aware of it) will let you know something isn’t quite right.. and there goes any shred of trust you have for that person.
Lack of copyright ownership. Under current law, AI-generated imagery cannot be copyrighted.. which probably doesn’t matter for most people, but could matter a lot if you think about it. Those AI headshots become public domain with no owner, which means that anyone can save, re-use, edit, or publish your face without permission. You can’t sue them or ask them not to use is - unlike what can be done with a real photographer-created image.. and I know because I have done it.
Lighting and detail distortions. These are limitations that exist now, but I don’t see them as something we can rely on being a problem for too long. AI can always get better (and some might say it’s getting better every day) and most of the time, people looking at headshots might not even care. So in my opinion, this isn’t a limitation where an argument against AI use can be made, at least not for very long.
So why would a client choose to pay a photographer?
There will always be people who want things cheap and easy and don’t care about quality. You are not convincing those people that AI headshots won’t solve their problem or give them a headshot that’s good enough to use. Don’t waste your breath. Don’t get angry. And don’t spend your night worrying about AI taking over the world. It’s not going to change anything.
Because there will always be people who have a certain set of principles they believe strongly in, one of which could very well be “NO AI USE” if I can help it.. or limiting AI use to things that aren’t creepy, that don’t promote an inevitable end of the world as we know it. You don’t have to convince those people, but you do have to be an option that’s better than AI.
Photographers seem to fall into two categories: ones who are truly amazing at their craft - you can watch them and they make it seem so easy and effortless that you walk away thinking this isn’t so hard, what’s the big deal? and the other set who are so in love with their photos that they don’t see how far they have to go. I’m generalizing here - obviously there is more nuance than that (so don’t take this personally).. but it’s pretty easy to tell these two groups apart.
If an AI headshot looks better than the headshots you can produce for a client, I don’t blame that client for using AI instead of you. Period. If your photos look like something anyone can take with an iPhone, you have a problem.. and that problem isn’t that AI is ruining your life (at least not in this instance).
The key here is that you have to be good at your job.. and photography is a job if that’s what you want it to be. It’s not a fun hobby, it’s not a creative outlet (although all those things are true in some instances).. a headshot photographer is providing a service and a product that costs money and that should be at a certain standard - otherwise it simply doesn’t make sense for someone to spend money on.
There have been and always will be competition. Just because right now AI is that “competition” instead of uncle Ben down the street doesn’t change anything. And i’m putting “competition” in quotes because those hobby photographers, or AI, aren’t really my competition (ok, even actual amazing photographers aren’t my competition either, they tend to be my friends, but my point stands).
If you want to be a good photographer, a good photography service provider, a good business owner, don’t look at things you can’t do anything about. Focus on your own skillset. Think about what you can provide that your clients actually need and will pay money for. And don’t waste any time worry about subpar photographs that don’t really matter anyway.
