The marketing industry will certainly be heavily impacted by AI, but not all jobs in marketing.
If you are engaged in market research or requirements gathering you may get an assist feo AI but humans will be doing this job for a long time. At least, the ones that do it right.
If you are a graphics artist or a photographer, you’re in trouble. Food photographers are toast, as are most product photographers. Copywriters are going to have to be great to survive. AI’s can churn out boilerplate ad copy all day long already. You’ll have to be special.
The work for small businesses is going to dry up, as small businesspeople will be able to pump out pretty good ad copy on their own. Ad agencies will have to figure out new ways to add value.
Why would food photographers be toast? By US law, the primary thing you’re advertising has to be made from the real product you’re selling, CGI or AI generated food would be considered strictly verboten. No current AI developments are targeted towards automating food styling or manipulating a physical camera. Food stylists and photographers have significant legally defensible jobs for a long time.
The thing with AI is that you can take a boring picture of food then have the AI enhance it in a gazillion ways. A lot of what made food photographers special is easily done by AI now.
Writing is actually only a small part of the job these days. Good copywriters (and I count myself as one) have to determine what gets written, how it’s deployed, targeted, voiced, etc. I’m more than happy to leave the boilerplate stuff to a bot.
Since I started this thread, I’m less afraid of AI taking my job before I’m ready to hang it up. It’s changing the job, but I don’t see it taking over.
I think everyone in every industry would be smart to spend time right now figuring out how to leverage AI properly in their jobs. In the near future and until AI use becomes normalized, those who can use AI effectively are going to have a huge leg up on their peers.
It’s already been normalized in software development to the point where if you aren’t using an AI copilot in your everyday programming tasks, you will fall behind your peers. In other industries. the AI savvy can still stand out.
But a lot of food photography is of something besides the food, or maybe there’s some leeway there. Because I’ve read (in photography magazines) various tricks used when taking pictures of food that create inedible food that look great on camera.
Most of those tricks are about dealing with the reality of real food. If it takes hours to set up a shot, a lot of the stuff like suds, syrup and other stuff will be faked.
The AI doesn’t care about that, because it’s making it up completely.
Here’s an article about AI food photography.
This applies to a lot of commercial photography. Great directors will still have jobs, but the second-unit directors and B-roll cinematographers are in trouble. Great writers are safe for now, but hacks knocking out soap opera scripts or serialized formula novels are in trouble.
And food photography is going to be fine. Clients need photographs of the food that they sell, not imaginary photos of things that have been “made up completely.”
The biggest threat to food photography hasn’t been AI, its been high quality cellphones. A chef can take a quick snap on his cellphone in good light, and that’s good enough for instagram, a server can take a photo of the bakery cabinet and that will be good enough for a blog. That, like micro-stock in years past, have mainly hit the low-end of the market, but commercial photographers targeting commercial clients have adapted.
In this video Scott Choucino, a successful food photographer based in the UK, talks briefly about the way the industry is trending since the pandemic.
And here is another video talking about AI in particular:
He doesn’t fear for his job. And if I still were healthy enough to be a food photographer, I wouldn’t be fearing for mine, either. All of my old clients are still with the person I recommended to replace me. AI will take some jobs, just like micro-stock and cellphones took jobs in the past. But food photographers, by and large, are going to be fine.
Here’s a link to a really good whitepaper about AI and creative businesses. The whitepaper itself is gated (free if you share your contact info), but the landing page is a solid preview in its own right.
I would postulate “yes” but in ways we don’t yet understand.
I don’t really know much about marketing, but I tend to view marketing is an industry that only serves to facilitate other industries that actually create end products and services (such as soft drinks and luxury cars). I’m sure like most people in most industries, marketing people tend to view their industry as a thing unto itself. I have a friend who is big in the marketing world and following his LinkedIn posts, even he seems bogged down by the concept of “Marketing” as generating content to get people to buy stuff.
To me (again, a relative outsider to marketing), I don’t see the value in marketers becoming a sort of Tom Smykowski from Office Space bringing the generated copy from the AI to the customers or whatever. I think the biggest value of AI will be that it can scale and tireless generate very customized and targeted ads on an individual basis.
But then again as a non-marketing person, I also feel marketers really don’t understand how most people literally do not give a shit about anything they generate and tend to view it as as annoying noise, regardless of how clever.
At my job in providing social services, they had a new two hour training today that was a review of English composition at work. They were serious about the employees focusing on choosing audience, channel, language, paper forms etc. I was glad we’re still expected to do so for documenting progress, that people aren’t going to use AI. If employees care about these facets it’s a good thing. I like AI for other things though as long as I’m not relying on the content.
If AIs take ‘influenver’ jobs, I won’t lose much sleep. Most ‘influencers’ get paid in free merch, and have to make the rest of their money from Patreon and clicks. Most of them are useless and have no qualifications to recommend whatever they are recommending. They’re basically noise in the system. And too many young people think they can become an ‘influencer’ and avoid a real job.
There are influencers who know what they are talking about. Experienced mechanics reviewing tools, professional CNC people reviewering enggravers, chefs reviewing knives, that kind of thing. But they are not under threat from AI, because they are doing real reviews and uncovering information about the products they review. The ‘influencers’ that are in trouble are the teens that hawk various products based on their own looks and personality and not much else. More like spokepeople than actual knowledgeable users of the products.
That cell phone image looks as good as it does due to high-powered AI. And this will get even more true over time. Already we see cases like where Samsung phones replace pictures of the moon with high-res versions. But that’s just a crude version of where things are going.
And, not long from now, people will take a picture of a dish that doesn’t look particularly appetizing, and the camera app will do its magic and turn it into something fantastic. It’ll be just as fake as the wax cheese or resin condiments that food photographers use. Just a lot cheaper.
…they were looking good even before high-powered AI. It’s about light. It’s always about the light. Improvements in light sensitivity, high-ISO performance and stability means that photos taken in the kitchen are no longer muddy, underexposed, blurry messes.
Because it’s also about portability. It’s the fact that Chef carries his phone everywhere in his pocket, and can pull it out and take a picture after they have plated the dish that makes the difference.
That means they don’t have to call out a photographer to take photos any more. No disruption to service. No dedicated photo days. That market segment had already been significantly impacted before the introduction of the sort of tools that have been talked about here. And any advances in technology in this area will target that very same market segment.
Chefs don’t typically make food that doesn’t look particularly appetizing. Most food that they make already looks pretty damn tasty. Take a photo in good light with a clean background and it will be good enough for social media, good enough for a DoorDash thumbnail. They don’t need any AI enhancements, and most wouldn’t even notice the difference if they were added.
You are talking about food stylists, not food photographers. Sometimes they are one-and-the-same. But more often than not, its a completely different job. I did very little food styling on my photoshoots. And I never used a food stylist. But I wasn’t targeting the high-end commercial side of the market. Not every food photo needs it.
Its a very broad market. The sort of AI tools that have been talked about here will largely be adopted by market segments that already don’t use food photographers much any more. In other market segments, there might be some impact.
But food photographers are not “toast.” Which was the point I was addressing. The largely cosmetic adjustments that people are providing examples of aren’t the reason why food photographers get work.
Many photographers may end up adopting AI into their work flow if they find it to be helpful. But those that do will include AI work into their pricing. Replace a food stylist for an AI digital tech? Sure. The line item on the invoice will cost exactly the same.
It won’t be “a lot cheaper.” It will take a significant amount of work in post in order to get images to both the standard and more importantly meet the vision that commercial clients demand. And in many cases it will be a lot cheaper, easier, and involve less messing around to just get it mostly right in camera on the day. On the larger commercial jobs, you’ve got multiple stakeholders that include creative directors, marketing departments, sometimes even the CEO that require a very particular vision to be executed.
