Using AI in Photography: What Are You Delegating?

The question I hear most about AI in photography isn’t really the right one.

There’s a lot of uncertainty about where AI will take creative trades—or whether it might replace them altogether. But one truth has always held: the tools change, and people find ways to use them to advance the human stories other people actually care about.

So for me, the question isn’t “Should I use AI?”

It’s “What am I delegating?”

Because delegation is a business decision. Abdication is not.

I’m perfectly comfortable letting AI handle things that don’t require taste, judgment, or intent—sorting, organizing, speeding up repetitive tasks, even suggesting starting points. That isn’t cheating. That’s running a business.

For example, I have no shortage of ideas for courses or articles, but I don’t want to spend hours scripting videos or outlining modules from scratch. I give AI my ideas and key points, let it generate an outline quickly, and then I evaluate and refine each section. I’ll often have it draft a teleprompter script next—again, as a starting point—then rewrite it so it says exactly what I want to say, in my voice.

That’s delegation.

But the moment you hand over decisions that shape the meaning of the work, you’ve crossed a line. Not ethically—creatively.

AI doesn’t know why one frame matters more than another. It doesn’t know what the light was saying. It doesn’t understand why you want to teach something this way instead of the way it predicts you should. It doesn’t know which moment carries weight for this client, this family, this story.

That’s still our job.

I think of AI as an assistant. It helps with best practices, clarification, refinement, and taking care of mundane tasks quickly. It does not replace judgment.

There may come a time when we can’t easily tell a photograph from an AI-generated image. But when you hire a photographer, you’ll always be able to tell whether they know what they’re doing. The ones who rely on AI to make decisions for them—rather than support their decisions—are going to have a hard time on assignment.

Used well, AI frees you up to spend more time where photographers actually add value: seeing, choosing, refining, and deciding with intention. Used poorly, it just makes average work faster and more uniform.

So no—I’m not worried about AI replacing photographers. Creative industries have always found ways to use tools, even advanced ones, in service of personal vision and story. Human attention is still drawn to human judgment.

What does concern me is photographers replacing their own judgment—using AI as a substitute for skill and experience. That’s the part that will let them down.

If you’re clear on what you’re delegating—and why—AI becomes a tool. If you’re not, it becomes a crutch.

Curious where you draw that line.