The first part =  Assistent helper

Warning:

In this reflection, I will try to look at the world realistically.

I will leave fantasy and magic aside. In the first part, I will my Assistant to use them.

I will completely set aside my usual optimistic view of the future in the second part, entitled THE MISCHIEVOUS ONE, where we will explore concerns about the future.

THE HELPER

I have a list of interesting things I would still like to share with you, and I am thinking about how to present them in a slightly different way.

The visual accompaniment to my texts is probably the greatest strength of my style – at least according to some of you.

Some of the old stories have no visual documentation, so I add my current photographs, sometimes even abstract ones, to help create the right atmosphere.

Most of the stories from the 1970s and 1980s are still sitting in a drawer. I do have photographic memories, but most of the pictures show nothing but houses, strangers, trees, and the sea.

As my clever mother asked me once, when I was showing her the developed black-and-white photographs from my travels:

"Jani, were you even there?"

Selfies did not exist back then, so when I travelled, I appeared in my own photographs perhaps once or twice at most.

Nevertheless, since last week I have the feeling that I can finally start writing about those long-ago adventures. I can create the visual accompaniment myself.

With a helping Assistent. 

Is it He or is it She, you may wonder ? That is the question. At first, it was non-binary *. Now that I pay for it, I have the feeling it is beginning to lean towards the female gender.

A prostitute. But a clever one.

 And so perhaps we can finally start writing about my work achievements during my summer jobs.

For example, about how, in the Soviet Union, I spent the summer helping to build a school in the Caucasus. VUT (Technical University Brno ) student, year 1974.

(I kept a three-page diary every single day, so you can look forward to chapters. Almost a novel-length edition!)

Or perhaps about my two-month journey around the USA in 1983.

It's full of incredible stories. But let's face it—when it comes to the pictures, isn't it much more visually appealing to see a beach in California than the forests of Minnesota or the skyscrapers of New York?

Play some music to go along with it: music

Or perhaps my escapades in communist China in 1984 will appeal to you more? Solo traveller.

How about our first trip with Paul  to India in 1985, where we were kidnapped right at the beginning? 

You could even find us trekking in the mountains—here we are at 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) above sea level in the Himalayas.

By this last image, you may already have guessed that Jana is playing around with AI **.

Here you can see the whole range of possibilities AI offers when working with images—from enhancing an old photograph (photo 1), to colorizing a black-and-white photograph (photo 2), creating a setting from a written prompt (photos 3, 4 and 5), making a caricature based on a photograph (photo 6), all the way to creating an entirely different reality.

(* At the end of this article, there is a practical demonstration of how and from what these photographs were created.)

So, what does this mean?

This tool is now essentially available to anyone with access to a paid AI service—including the ability to create films and other visual content.

One thing is clear: we can no longer automatically believe almost anything we see.

Want a photo of yourself, pregnant and wearing a Czechoslovak army uniform, shaking hands with a young Trump? Voila!

Until recently, we were being urged not to believe everything we read on the internet. Now, in the age of digital photography and artificial intelligence, we also need to be cautious about what we see.

As a photographer, I have come to terms with the fact that being truly original is now, in many ways, almost impossible. For example, I can ask AI to create an image in the style of Van Gogh—or in the style of virtually any other well-known artistic movement or artist.

Of course, this also means that certain professions—documentary photographers, product photographers, graphic designers, and other visual content creators—are coming under increasing pressure.

In the second part, we will take a look at what AI can already do these days—and what dangers may be lurking ahead.

My intention here was simply to document the creative visual possibilities of AI.

And my apologies to everyone who already knows all of this and regularly works with generative AI in the visual arts.

So:

Pour yourself another glass of wine, turn up the music, and shall we dance?

While we still can—before AI starts telling us what to do.

While in this first part I was playing around with AI,  

in the second, we'll take a look at 

what happens when AI starts playing around with us.

The second part of the blog, "The Naughty Assistant" can be found here: THE NAUGHTY ONE 

* For illustration, I'm showing the original photograph AI worked with alongside the resulting image. 

 The definition of AI  (Artificial Intelligence) and explanation how it works can be found on this  link  

All the photographs on this page were created with the help of artificial intelligence.