Design Anatomy
Welcome to Design Anatomy, where we examine the world of interiors and design. With a shared passion for joyful, colour-filled, and lived-in spaces, Bree Banfield and Lauren Li are excited to share their insights and inspiration with you.
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Design Anatomy
The Intersection of AI and Interior Photography with Tom Blachford
Can AI redefine the creative boundaries of photography? Join us as we explore this captivating question with Tom Blachford, a distinguished architecture and interiors photographer who has ventured into the intriguing realm of AI art. Tom reveals his journey through the intersection of AI and interior photography, sharing insights from his recent high-profile projects, such as an AI art commission for the innovative restaurant, Tombo Den. We dive into the transformative impact of AI on creative professions and grapple with the ethical dilemmas and aesthetic shifts it introduces.
Discover how AI tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT are reshaping the way artists and designers express their creative visions. Tom discusses the emotional rollercoaster of working with AI—from initial fascination to the complex challenges that arise. By sharing personal anecdotes and experiences, we reveal how this technology propels us from laborious skill-based creations to dynamic idea-driven explorations, offering a multitude of creative possibilities. Our conversation traverses the delicate balance between awe and ethical concerns, as we ponder AI’s burgeoning role in art and design.
Finally, we confront the controversies sparked by AI-generated photos in award competitions and the ongoing debates surrounding authenticity and creativity. The episode takes a hopeful look at the future, underscoring the necessity for responsible AI development to enhance diversity and ensure the preservation of the human touch in photography and design. Engage with us in this thought-provoking discourse with Tom Blachford as we navigate the evolving landscape of AI in art, challenging traditional norms and expanding the horizons of creative expression.
Check out Tom's amazing photographic work including his Midnight Modern Series & his incredible AI creations below,
https://tomblachford.com/fine-art/
Instagram @blachford
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Welcome to Design Anatomy, the interior design podcast hosted by friends and fellow designers, me, Lauren Li and me, Bree Banfield, with some amazing guest appearances along the way. We're here to break down everything from current trends to timeless style, with a shared passion for joyful, colour-filled and lived-in spaces. We're excited to share our insights and inspiration with you. In this conversation, Lauren and I talk with Tom Blachford, a professional architecture and interiors photographer and AI artist, so we delve into some really fascinating things like the intersection of AI and interior photography, and Tom shares his whole journey with AI art, how he started out in that, and we discussed the evolution of technology and its implications for artists and photographers. It's just a really great deep dive into that.
Speaker 1:Ai image generation oh my gosh, it sure is. It's such a good discussion with Tom. We explore the ethical considerations surrounding AI generated images, the aesthetic qualities of these kind of images and the future of interior photography in a world increasingly influenced by AI. It's a really rare insight of that AI generation of images from a professional photographer from their point of view, so it's really really good, isn't it Brie?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, some great, great topics covered and some interesting things said. Yeah, it's interesting, we did. Yeah, we did have a few things we're like. Should we delete that? No, we're going to keep it in there. So I hope you enjoy it. But before we get going, I just wanted to remind you guys that I have a sub stack blog which is called the Style Studies Essentials. So if you wanted to read more about interior design and kind of, you know, dive into some gorgeous imagery, it's a free subscription to join the Style Studies on Substack. And if you're not familiar with Substack, it's a whole world of amazing writers from all around the world. I love it. You can also be a paid subscriber and get a few little extra things as well. Yeah, substack's really cool. I feel like it's taken off quite a bit too.
Speaker 2:I was just looking on there today.
Speaker 1:And it's just something for everyone. It's just one of those cool platforms. Let's see what happens with it Exactly. Hopefully it'll stick around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you jump into the show notes, you'll also find a link there to sign up for news from me, which will include information about trends and short courses and also, um, keeping across the launch of our design edit, which is, uh, curated collections of furniture and decor so that you can basically get a pre-selected concept from me. It's like working with me, but you get a. I guess you get to do it in your own way. You'll have all the information there and it's at the fraction of the cost of working directly with me on a bespoke design, but you still get a cool space at the end of it. Clever, love it. So good, brie. All right, let's dive in and chat with Tom. Awesome. So, hi, tom, thank you so much for joining Lauren and I today to talk about what I consider you to almost be an expert on now, which is AI and obviously more connected to interiors. But before we dive into that, we always like to ask our guests what have you been up to? Tell us what you've been doing lately.
Speaker 2:It's been a busy year. We had our second child, a baby boy, so that has made everything permanently very busy. So we've got two boys now and, yeah, I've had a really busy year. I guess my life is kind of split between my commercial work, which is interiors and architecture in the industry, photographing for designers and architects, and between my fine art photographic work, which is stuff that I've been working on for a long time, like my Midnight Modern series from Palm Springs and then AI work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, my AI work, which has kind, uh, been simmering for the last couple of years. So I've just had a show of my midnight modern works which you both came to, which was gorgeous to see you there and, uh, that was really great, great turnout and good to get the work out there in Melbourne. And, uh, and I had a big AI project come to fruition, which was a commission from the Lucas Group for a new restaurant on Chapel Street called Tombo Den, which has nine, 19, I think, um, original AI produced artworks that fill the restaurant that are all framed and a couple on screen. So, yeah, that was a really epic, um, amazing process and, yeah, that that is like kind of my own little gallery that lives there now, which is awesome.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's been a busy year. I haven't been in there. Have you ever been in, have you Lauren?
Speaker 2:No, but I'm going next week.
Speaker 1:So, tom, can you tell us, like, what did they? What kind of brief did they give you?
Speaker 2:The original brief was that they wanted people to complain.
Speaker 1:They wanted Wow, that is hilarious About mercy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that that's a different brief. Yeah, I feel like it's more like a good person at that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was kind of a story that was given about this sort of myth about how sushi was created, that it was created in like a gambling den for this guy who was rolling dice and wanted a snack you could eat with one hand, and I don't think the story actually has any um any truth to it in terms of the actual origins of sushi, but it's it's quite a delicious tale and so that kind of led a little bit of the exploration that it was kind of like a weird Japanese Yakuza acid trip nightmare vibe that I was kind of going for with the work. So, yeah, I went really deep down the rabbit hole, probably produced five, maybe four or 5,000 images and presented them with about 800 images for the final selection, and then we had to get that down to 20 or so.
Speaker 2:So it was uh, it was a great process. I was working with dko architects and with the creative team from locust brood, so it was uh, it was cool. So that it's kind of it's a little bit of an underground secret. My work, my name, is not really plastered anywhere in there. The works just kind of live in this weird world that it's kind of like an if you know, you know thing.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah. So who brought you on to the project?
Speaker 2:uh dko did the um, the architects. They kind of had a vision for where that the artwork is going to be a really important part of the interiors and the and the tone of everything. So they kind of brought me on quite early to try and fit in with the direction that they wanted and see if we could find a way that you know, made everybody happy with the result, so yeah, it was really fascinating.
Speaker 1:So are they photorealistic?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yes, but we tried to keep some AI weirdness into them. Everybody's kind of got six fingers or four fingers. I quite enjoy seeing those flaws in the AI because they're already disappearing. The new algorithms aren't making those mistakes anymore, and so I find it a kind of a romantic time when we could see the man in the machine a little bit and be able to tell, or be able to look closer and tell. So I yeah, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:A romantic time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Romantic time where people have different number of fingers and toes and odd stuff and limbs and everything else Weed watermarks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, watermarks yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that sort of brings us to one of our first discussion points, which is sort of like I've written AI as a fairly new tool, but it's not really. Is it Like? When did you first not really is it Like? When did you first kind of come across it and how did that sort of start your fascination in AI in terms?
Speaker 2:of, I guess, creating images. I got into it probably in 2018 or 19, before all these kind of diffusion models that could do anything, and at that time there was a. The models were all called GANs generative adversarial network and they were quite easy to understand and explain really fascinating but quite interesting and the GANs would only really have a single task. There was one that could do people. There was a website that I used to show people, called this person does not exist, and I'd show you know, show people and say this person doesn't exist, and they just couldn't believe it. It was another one that could transfer a style, could take you know a picture and you could put in starry, starry night and it would make that picture in the style of starry, starry night. And so I was really interested in kind of 2019, 2020 into these technologies and thinking like, oh wow, I must be in trouble, because if people can just go to Palm Springs and then add moonlight later, then you know, maybe I'm screwed. And then it was 2021 that all that first model started coming out.
Speaker 2:Mid Journey, version three, was the first one that I used and, yeah, it blew my mind. I did not think that we would arrive at a point where we could make anything just from prompts as soon as we did, and no idea that it would accelerate or that ChatG, gpt would be coming on the scene as well. So, yeah, I'd say, probably coming up to almost three years of using Midjourney and I think I've produced about 30,000 images on Midjourney, which is not that many I could have produced a lot more, but I kind of go through periods of being totally disgusted by it and not to go near it and other times of being absolutely obsessed with it.
Speaker 1:What was it that actually drew you to the idea of, like, where did you actually come across it? Do you remember like, what was that first thing where you went? Oh, this is interesting.
Speaker 2:I think somewhere on the internet I think the earlier ones were, I can't remember the model, but I think it was Dali came out first and people using Dali, and then there was kind of bootleg Dali, and so I guess we were all kind of on the lookout and like crappy memes on the internet were getting done with with AI, and then, yeah, I think, uh, I found a YouTuber who was making stuff and uh managed my head around me in general.
Speaker 1:So you just sort of stumbled across it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kind of, look, I had been looking for a few years. I'd been working with a really great, amazing render artist, a 3D artist, because I'd kind of realized that I had ideas about design and architecture that I wanted to explore. I wanted to explore kind of myth making and creating these kind of false narratives and false histories of things, and so I was working with an amazing 3D artist.
Speaker 2:but that process is so laborious, you know, it takes them hundreds of hours to do things, and so I'd been sort of looking into digital representations of images and how to create images of things that didn't exist for a while, and so I was gagging, for I'd even bought like a super expensive, powerful computer to try and teach myself Blender, to try and learn 3D, to try and onboard myself with all of this really difficult, really arbitrary stuff, to learn how to model stuff, how to texture stuff, how to animate stuff, and so I spent some time in lockdown doing that and it was hard, so hard, to onboard with, and so I was so relieved when AI came out and I could just explore images without it taking, you know, hours and hours and hours to tweak every little thing, that I could just apply my taste to things instead of lamenting the fact that I didn't have those skills, you know which some people are going to be listening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and of course you sort of want to create. Well, sorry, go ahead, tom. What we're going to say some people? No, I was just, of course, some people are listening, because you sort of want to create. Well, sorry, go ahead, tom. What were you going to say? Some people are listening.
Speaker 2:No, I was just going to say some people yes, yeah, obviously, anyone who has got the skill is lamenting that their skills are not as important anymore, that people would confuse what they used to do. That took a huge amount of skill and processing power and human capital, and capital to do can now be done, you know, very, very quickly by, arguably, people with no skill. But I'm still in love with it and that has not really dissuaded me, and I'm not one for skill worship. I think that I'm on the side of ideas and I want to see ideas come to life and, however that happens, I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I feel like what, what you do, like how you're exploring it? You probably wouldn't, like you said, you sort of started to work with someone with with those skills, but realize that that is so labor intensive. It's sort of you lose the love of what you're actually trying to do. Right, because you're trying to um, I don't know convey an idea, or it is an art form. You weren't trying to, like create an exact interior that you're then selling to someone to build, or etc so it probably doesn't need to have that level of skill applied to it.
Speaker 2:Really, it's way more make-believe yeah, then I also needed to see options. I um, I I didn't know what I wanted. I I was going to know when I saw it, but it's not really fair to sound like a lot of clients of ours exactly.
Speaker 2:Well, this is the thing you know, and I'm. I have clients too. If somebody asks me, hey, can I see another hundred options, then I'm gonna be grumpy about it. But with a, with ar you, you can do that. You can ask to see another hundred versions, and by seeing another hundred versions it refines your own taste of what you want, what you thought you want. You know it's. It's sharpening you all the time.
Speaker 1:Lauren, I guess I think you should weigh in. I feel like I'm probably the lightweight in this group today because I think you I mean Tom's definitely the heavy, heavy weight. But, lauren, you've spent time really delving into AI and you've actually taught some skills on how to use it with interiors. Like when did you start looking at it? Was it sort of in that same time, like around that mid-journey, when that became kind of, I guess, more popular? Yeah, I mean so many of those things that you were saying, tom, I was just writing some notes. I'm like, oh, yep, yep, yep, like there's so many great things that you've just said to unpack.
Speaker 1:I liked what you said about you feeling disgust versus sort of the fascination, and I struggle with that too, because, you know, sometimes I'll sort of feel, you know, even thinking about your work as a photographer, and I feel like it's like the snake eating its own tail, like you're. But then there's like rebirth and creativity coming out of that as well. But I just find it really fascinating, especially coming from a photographer, and you know you touched on that skill and everything 3D renderers, I mean photography like it's just changing the landscape so rapidly. And I struggle with that fascination and that disgust as well. You know, and you were saying, those 3D renderers. You know what happens with all their skills. Well, they're probably half. You know a lot of their work they've produced is out there that is drawn on, and with photographers as well. All of those images are just stolen by the AI apps. And you know, you mentioned, you know, midjourney Dali. You know there was no agreement, there was nothing in place.
Speaker 2:As far as I've learned, they stole all of that imagery and it's just a free for all A bit of a hot take, but I reckon it's more like borrowed. I mean, I feel like the word stole kind of gives a connotation that they're taking it and not giving it back. But they borrowed it, they looked at it without telling anyone. Look, my work is very extensively represented in the data set and there is websites where I can opt out of it and I will not do that. I I'm happy for my work to be in the data set. I don't believe that my work being in the data set really gives it a chance to even do a good job of replicating it. And even if it could, good luck to everyone for selling it. It's hard to sell prints.
Speaker 1:It's hard to sell images. If they can, if they can bootleg my work and make something out of it, fine. But um, really, yeah, absolutely. I just feel like I've um written two books and I've spent so much money on photography and I really value photography so do I yeah yeah, like I just find that.
Speaker 1:So it's changing, it's shifting and it's interesting to hear your take on that. Yeah, look, I'm just going to throw in some layman's stuff for the people listening who are interested but don't know as much that when you talk about opting out, there are so obviously AI scrapes the internet and data and that's where it gains its information to put things together, whether that's words or images, but there are now things in place that you can put, even on your own websites. I guess, to stop it from doing that which I find interesting, because surely that's just going to be a continual update, because it'll just keep finding ways around that. I'm sure I was talking to someone actually about it last week keep finding ways around that. I'm sure I was talking to someone actually about it last week and they were saying that instead of opting for something you can put on the website, they just put something in their T's and C's.
Speaker 1:So if they ever have to go after anyone for taking something they feel has been plagiarized, it's in the T's and C's, so that they can kind of go well, the T's and C's are here. They can kind of go. Well, the t's and c's are here. You're not allowed to do it, but they didn't actually try and block ai from actually doing it. But anyway, I just wanted to go back to that just so people understand. That's what. That's what you're referring to, tom, and you're referring to your actual photography work, like the um the midnight am I gonna get it wrong.
Speaker 2:Say what's the name of the series.
Speaker 1:Thank, you hang on, that's right. Yeah, the Midnight Modern series. So you're not concerned that people will try and, I guess, copy that through AI, which I guess is a possibility, right, but you think that.
Speaker 2:I've been trying it's, I think.
Speaker 1:You've been trying to do it.
Speaker 2:Of course, one of your questions it was what was the first thing you did with AI? It was try to see how good it was at copying Midnight.
Speaker 1:Modern yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's not very good. It's still not very good. I'd love it to be better. But look, not just my Midnight Modern work, all of my work. I mean this is a really hard thing and it's really controversial, but I feel like stolen. It doesn't feel like the right word and it scraped everything from the internet all at once. Like it it's, but it's built something kind of great out of it. It feels like it just stole, you know, like a tenth of a cent from every person on earth and every creative, and now it's built a library out of it and I I don't begrudge it, I really don't.
Speaker 1:I've kind of always been a bit of a pirate, to be honest, um, but but I but lots of photos of you growing up with different versions of pirate outfits now, but anyway, that's fair.
Speaker 2:I look, having used it and I've kind of taken a few people through this exercise where I can produce something using mid journey and then say, okay, fine, let's try and work out what what it's referencing so I take that image and I put it into google image search, I put it into pinterest and I say show me images that look like this. And some of the time, a of the time, it can't produce anything that looks anything like it. And I can also then go back to the data set and search the data set of 5 billion images and I can put that image that I created in mid-journey back into the data set and say show me the image that this came from. And it doesn't find it. Not because it's being strange and trying to lead you astray. It's that went into it, it is.
Speaker 2:I think there's possibly a tendency of people to simplify it into maybe a human form that if you're going to, you know, take stuff that it's going to make this kind of like copyright infringing collage of crap, but it honestly fed off everything that was ever made and now it spits out new things and that's that's hard to understand, I think, unless you've used it a lot. And, and yeah, I mean even most of the time that I'm producing work, I'm just using the single prompt and I'm just running that same prompt over and over again. And so every time that you're typing in the same text, even if it's three words, for I think it is 56 million, uh, repeats in a row it's going to give you a completely different image. So it's not running out of ideas, it's not recycling stuff, it is just constantly producing new imagery and uh, yeah, I think that's amazing but at the same time, I feel like there is a lot of sameness.
Speaker 1:You know you are using it in a way that's very nuanced, but you know if you go on to mid journey. If I was to jump onto mid journey now, I would just see the same old I don't know cats wearing a space suit or some random things that were not right. They're not random, but they're mid-journey. If I was to jump onto mid-journey now, I would just see the same old I don't know cats wearing a spacesuit or some random things.
Speaker 1:They're not random, but they're not random. But you just see the same thing and I can't look at an AI image and it's going to get harder and harder. But you can look at an image and I've actually had clients present me with AI images and say I like a space like this. They don't know, it's not real because it's on Pinterest, but do you think there is an aesthetic that you can tell if something is made by AI?
Speaker 2:It depends on the model.
Speaker 2:I think that each model has its own aesthetic and I can pick quite a few of them, but not always.
Speaker 2:I think I'm probably better than most because I've produced hundreds of thousands of real images of interiors and I've produced thousands of AI images of interiors, so I can probably pick it based on things that I could probably not describe to anyone just the tone and shadow and light and the way that things appear and things.
Speaker 2:But it's getting really, really difficult. We're basically in a time where we can't trust any images that we see at all, and so I'm kind of trying to integrate that as part of my art practice, that I'm creating these myths that are super convincing, that are visually perfect and stunning, and kind of take people on this like aha journey, but in an incredibly low stakes environment where I'm not showing an image of a politician doing something deplorable or someone you know doing something horrific. I'm just saying, hey, look at these underwater houses that you didn't know about, and everybody kind of goes is that real, is that fake? And I think having them ask those questions in an environment where there's nothing to lose I think is really interesting to me just in terms of the psychology, but I also feel like it's kind of part of my artistic responsibility at the moment to explore that line of where people's awareness is.
Speaker 1:So could you tell us? What is that safe environment are you talking to? About your Instagram account?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So could you let everyone know what the handle is so we could have a look and those on YouTube will be able to have a look.
Speaker 2:Sure, my handle is Blatchatchford, b-l-a-c-h-f-o-r-d, and so there's a little bit of a mix of some conventional fine art photography that I've done, but there's also a lot of AI stuff thrown in there, and I don't always label it or make it clear. I do sometimes, but I yeah, that's where I've been posting.
Speaker 1:I like to keep us guessing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I haven't put any on my website yet. I haven't worked out how to make a section for it or how to kind of translate.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's only on your socials. I actually didn't realize that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's only on my socials for now. I just you know how updating websites is like, the thing that's constantly bolted to the bottom of your to-do list. I haven't put it there, but yeah, I've been exploring for probably three years now, putting stuff on Instagram and coming up with a whole backstory. I'm really interested in these kind of design myths that happen and also the idea that when things happen before the internet, there's all these things in books that people just kind of treat as if it doesn't exist and so kind of playing on that, that all these things that happened kind of like pre-1990, before the internet, you know, or well before the internet, that I can kind of tell people there's these whole stories and these whole worlds that could have been real and you don't know whether it's real and that's fun.
Speaker 1:And I love it when people are really in those early stages. They're really questioning, they're like you really had a lot of people scratching their heads out there. It was really fun to watch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even gorgeous, gorgeous John Golings, who's, you know, the godfather of architectural photography. I put up a story about exploding vending machines in Japan and John just deadpan commented wow, I didn't know this happened, and you know that was early days. And I was like, wow, I even you know he's a master of image making and this was version four. Mid-journey it was really quite obvious looking back, but yeah, if people weren't on the lookout it'd get you. We were not on the lookout when you were showing us those images. Definitely not then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like now, you do kind of question things more. Definitely, but I think initially, absolutely there would be. I know people would send me things and go is this real? Well, I almost feel like even photography here's my hot take on photography so I feel like photography is sort of interiors. Photography is at a level that it's almost replicating 3D renders like it's so perfect and it's styled so within an inch of its life into just like this perfect image of a space. Is it a who lives?
Speaker 2:there, who knows who cares, and I imagine I don't live like that though.
Speaker 1:Like a trend. Lauren, you think this is a trend, that that's happening. Well, I feel like it might swing back around because you know those images then we can see be created by AI. But I feel like I would love to see interiors photography go back to something where it shows the person that lives there and the quirks the people that live there, and it's not so perfectly styled Like, it's a bit more loose and shows I don't know just a little less uptight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Rory Gardner's doing a great job, I think.
Speaker 1:People that aren't quite on board yet are probably the brands. I think they still want everything to be somewhat perfect and yet they'll always be the first people that go oh, we need it to have a human element, but their version of that would be like a pair of shoes or an open magazine or a coffee cup. Yeah, so to kind of get it back into that slightly more gritty, what was that fantastic magazine that used to, um do?
Speaker 1:the interviews that were like yeah yeah, and that too there's a couple, but like they just did like raw, you know, like literally the beds are made and there's socks on the floor and just like. But they felt real and interesting and layered, and so I wonder if it'll kind of start to move to that extreme, to kind of as a backlash of this perfection that we're seeing.
Speaker 2:So we can leave our dirty socks on the floor, and it's artful and chic. Well, my place would be perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But I feel like, yeah, those AI spaces, they are so perfect and there, you know, there isn't that. Oh, I don't know, but I guess they can also create the dirty sock on the floor. Yeah, you know that's the thing that copy whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's still a human touch to.
Speaker 1:I reckon, though and Tom tell me what you think my take on the photography versus the ai version, or even a render, I suppose is is yes, it's, it's the, it's the element of where's the little bit that's imperfect, because a photographer will usually, I mean, for me it's all about the light and how they capture that light, or control that light, or add, add light, um, and some photographers like to do that quite perfectly, but I think when we looked at people's styles, it wasn't just composition that would play into it, like the type of light or that sort of stuff's a bit harder, I think, to replicate in the AI and the render world.
Speaker 1:So that that's the bit that's imperfect to me. It's like that's the human touch of the photographer, is like their style, which isn't like not everyone does it. Well, I think some people kind of try and copy other people's styles, so it doesn't maybe translate as well, and they work that out, I guess, eventually. But, um, the good photographers have there's just something about it, and sometimes even another photographer can't quite replicate it. What do you think, tom, like am I?
Speaker 2:look. Yeah, I think I think we all strive to have our own take on it and have our images be recognizable outside of you know, seeing who took it. I think we strive for that, but I think that AI will be able to do it. As I see it at the moment, I feel like I'm probably and maybe the reason why I'm so like what do you do? Ai doesn't really hasn't really affected me, because my clients need the actual project that actually exists to be captured, because, in the end, they want publicity, they want to be published in magazines and they want to win awards for their work, and at the moment, the awards judges are only taking projects that are photographed, even if we're free to touch the hell out of it And're only really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. You know the gpos are all gone, they're only uh, they're only really publishing light switches other than other than the cover, obviously that we. Yeah, there's no light switches, there's no, anything. The, the magazines are really only publishing yeah, uh, they're only really publishing built work, so that's really the moat around my industry and my livelihood is the fact that.
Speaker 2:So if those priorities change which they very well could if awards are happy to give awards to concepts and ideas instead of actual built executions, then yeah, I might be in trouble. So that's kind of how I see the landscape at the moment. Is that, as an architecture photographer who captures real spaces and I have to be in that space to do that I am less under threat than, say, an advertising photographer who's brought together, you know, a bunch of strangers to a beach in mexico at the perfect sunset to make them look like they're all friends drinking a beer so I think that think that and the brands will do whatever is cheapest, probably in the end.
Speaker 1:That's the reality, isn't it? Yeah, that's the reality, you know. You did make a point then about. You know interior designers and architects want their projects to be captured and then published. However, you know we have seen Bell Magazine published their 50th anniversary edition and on the front cover they used an artificial intelligence image, and that was, yeah, image generated using Midjourney, I believe. So you know it is slowly creeping in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a big move from them. That was, um, I don't I, I guess it was. It was also making point that they didn't collaborate with an ai artist or anybody to do it. It seems like they just pumped it out in-house. So that was kind of a real shot fired across the bow, um that they just, you know, removed, removed the, the creative, you know, uh, practitioner. I would have loved to see that yeah, that was my main thing.
Speaker 1:I've taken as well. I got, I got the idea of the concept and and why they did it in terms of you know, like it's the anniversary show and they're trying to show, I guess what happens now, like what is the?
Speaker 1:latest thing, but they really had a great opportunity to bring in um a photographer to direct it or someone who you know I guess even someone like yourself, but even someone who hadn't worked with AI and to get them to sort of help direct what it should look like in terms of the style of how it was captured, and a stylist or a designer or just a few creatives to kind of collaborate on it and show how it can be a fantastic tool. And instead I feel like they took that opportunity away from the creatives and, whilst the concept was a great idea, I think it fell flat a little bit from the industry's point of view and then from the consumer point of view, because most consumers, I don't think would have picked up that it was AI at all, even though they made it really obvious. I think their issue is they then go oh great, this is amazing. I love this house. Who lives there?
Speaker 2:Where is it?
Speaker 1:Like what's this? Like they want to actually know and understand the story behind things. So when you kind of do something that should be real, it's sort I don't know it falls flat to me I.
Speaker 2:I also feel like I think you called it a fantastic tool, but I think that the major potential of ai and when I enjoy it the most is is a fantastical tool where you can create things that you can't build that, you can't yes, that can't exist, exactly, yeah, and it's been really frustrating for me to see also that there's been a few AI awards or AI images that have been awarded photography prizes, and they're usually like a black and white image. That's kind of already. That photography already suffers from this tendency to try and you know, appease curators that died a hundred years ago and you know live in the past of what our medium was, died a hundred years ago and you know live in the past of what our medium was and you know assume that anything black and white is art, and I refute that.
Speaker 2:And to see images created by this future technology also trying to replicate, you know, past a hundred and something years ago is really frustrating to me because the artists who I love, who I follow, are creating things that, with AI, that are impossible or incredibly difficult to create in any other way in reality, and so I think that it has so much potential as a kind of mind-bending reality tool to take you down this rabbit hole. It's so much more exciting it is, it can make impossible things that nobody's ever seen before, and by having those out in the world then everybody's tastes kind of get sharpened and I think that that's the kind of tragic missed opportunity of using it to try and replicate things that we've done, things that we've got, things that we've already seen.
Speaker 1:Agree, agree. And then it also feeds itself too, right, like so. I kind of was going to touch on this before when we were talking about how you know it takes you put it really well, tom, before that it takes like a part of you know everybody's work, like a tiny piece, and then brings it all together, which is kind of what our brains do.
Speaker 1:Let's face it, we take everything in, and then we reproduce it in our own way when we create things, but with AI, when nothing new is being made, I feel like we can get stuck in a bit of a loop of it keeps kind of just regurgitating itself, which is, I think, why we're starting to see a lot of same-sameness in the imagery that's being created, because, people, if you're just a lame and you don't know how to push it past that, and if it's only taking what exists and we're not creating new, then we just kind of get stuck in this loop of kind of just regurgitating the same thing, which I feel like we're kind of in a weird era of doing that literally because of capitalism, like you know if you look at it from the magazine point of view.
Speaker 1:Even that cover, they literally said they created the perfect cover because it's what everybody said they wanted. So if we just keep creating what everybody says they want like right now, because they already know that exists, like that cover or like a blue kitchen or whatever it is that sales say is popular, then when does it start to evolve? So you still have to have really creative people taking control of like this to push it forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. I think where I love Midjourney is that I have, I've voraciously consumed, I've just been an internet addict for God knows how many years, since I, you know, I've just and especially as a creative photographer.
Speaker 1:Why aren't your?
Speaker 2:eyes square. Yeah, I've just consumed every image that I could possibly get my eyes on for like the last 15 years, you know, on on photography sites, on photography books, on Tumblr, on anywhere I could get it on the internet, on pinterest, and I am still constantly seeing things that mid-journey produces that I've never seen before and they make me think visually like wow, that's a, that's a new aesthetic, that's a new thing or it's such an amazing mix of old aesthetics.
Speaker 2:That it, yeah, it it's still exciting. It's some it's also infuriating and and occasionally disgusting, but it it's still. You know, this is probably not going to age. Well, I look not. No, no hot takes on it on ai ever do. I'll probably look back on this as I'm, you know, being enslaved by an ai robot and think, geez, I probably should shut the hell up. Yeah, yeah, yeah well, I on that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a really great point, you know, with the Bell magazine. I would have loved to see that two years ago. That would have blown my mind, yeah. So maybe it was a little bit, I don't know, there was a missed opportunity in my mind. But you know, I think it's great that they did something different and they really got everyone talking about it.
Speaker 1:So that's great too. I like the idea that you were talking about the whole myth-making kind of you know with your images, and could you speak on that a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just think it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just think it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:It's quite cathartic for me to kind of take the very serious world of architecture and capitalism and kind of subvert it into interesting stories, one that, sorry, in my what's Happening is an exhibition of three AI artists at the RACV club in Healesville at the moment, which is going to travel over a few different venues, and I'm one of them, and so the work that I'm exhibiting is about this period in design where in the 70s and 80s in Europe, there was this tax rebates for offshore oil companies to be able to get tax rebates to build things really deep underwater to build oil rigs.
Speaker 2:But a bunch of kind of rich people in Monaco and Italy worked out that they could useates to build things really deep underwater to build oil rigs, but a bunch of kind of rich people in monaco in italy worked out that they could use it to build underwater houses, basically for free, and so there was this whole like golden era of underwater design, and so I created this magazine called legis, auto imare, which was like the milanese magazine that chronicled this whole era of design, and so and then I kind of created this whole story of each of the architects and there's kind of multiple eras of it was kind of like an initial era where the style was very kind of baroque, it was called renaissance reef and it was.
Speaker 2:Everything was quite ornate. And then there was kind of like a wealth transfer and the new kids building underwater houses didn't want their grandparents underwater house, so they kind of had this new trippy style that was called op art aquatica, and so everything was really kind of acid trippy and so and and the point is kind of like, well, I've got this story and there's photos of it. So you know, there's just sort of been this thing for years of just like if there's photos of it on the internet it must be real, and so just kind of playing. But also we know that you know there's these magazines and these books and these things that exist in piles and in boxes and in basements and in op shops, that these whole you know things that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that backs it all up. So I yeah the. The original myth that I came up with was that all of the most famous modernist houses got renovated in really hardcore postmodern style in the 90s and then it kind of all got restored and it all got covered up and that was what I was working on with with the render artist, mr p, and so that that never saw the light of day. But tragically, I really missed. There was a window when we were working in renders where we could have put that out there and people would have had no idea that they really would have trusted it. They would have have not believed that renders. You know, nobody knew that renders were that good. Nobody knew that you could make images any other way. I missed this golden window to release that series you did.
Speaker 1:It's over. We don't trust anything anymore. People don't trust.
Speaker 2:No, and nor should you, nor should you. So now all I can do is prolifically spew out myths until a few of them just kind of seed a bit of doubt and also just enjoyment of the story and the imagery around it, which is amazing.
Speaker 1:It's really clever. Yeah. What do you think about somebody going onto Midjourney and creating a image and saying that they own the copyright to that image?
Speaker 2:Oh, such a spicy meatball, this one, sorry.
Speaker 1:I'm just so curious. I mean, personally I don't think they do, but I mean, Well, it's not been proven yet, has it? It's a very great area still, I believe it may.
Speaker 2:I just don't know when, if ever, it's going to settle. My gorgeous wife, kateate, actually had a previous life.
Speaker 2:Before she was an amazing artist as a copyright lawyer, and so we are yeah, we are very across copyright in this house, and I am constantly educating people on around the dinner table it's just uh, we just know what, what is, what it says, what it does, and I cannot see any way. It's just a square peg in a round hole. I cannot really see a way that these concepts can marry into each other AI and the way that it's produced, the levels of input and I just can't see how these things are going to marry up anytime soon. Or it'll be like the EU will make a decision and the US will make a separate decision and then a bunch of cases will get fought.
Speaker 2:Disney will get involved at some point. Someone else will get involved, it's going to, and all the while, we're moving at an exponential pace. We haven't even started, you know taking off the curve yet.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, it's wild pace.
Speaker 2:We haven't even started taking off the curve yet. There's also people. There's an American guy who is fighting for his AI that he created to be able to own the full copyright. So he's against what most artists might want for themselves commercially, which is for me to be able to copyright the stuff that I create so that maybe I can have more protection of it. But he is going the other way and trying to say no, this robot is you know, this is alive, this made the thing, this owns the copyright solely and entirely.
Speaker 1:I wondered if there was any cases like that. So there is a case currently.
Speaker 2:He's going hard, yeah he's. He's investing a lot of resources in fighting the US Copyright Council, or Copyright Authority.
Speaker 1:And the thing is, if that happens, obviously it's American-based, but it will create precedent right, and so then it becomes a whole thing. Probably not the decisions that get made.
Speaker 2:It just keeps flipping and backflipping and flipping back, and I think it will continue to do so. And so I mean, look, the other thing to keep in mind is that, unless you're Disney, copyright is really just a game of who wants to go to court and spend the most money. You know, it's not really like there's not the copyright police who turn up at your door and you know, shut it down or tear it down or burn it down. It's. It just becomes another legal avenue of wasting of resources. You know, similar to how people use defamation. It's just whoever, whoever's got the most money will probably win, or whoever wants to tap out first.
Speaker 2:So the way that I treat copyright is, you know, for my images I enforce my copyright in all of my photographic images and with ai it's kind of like I just got to keep moving so fast, kind of like tom dixon's approach. You know that he got copied so voraciously by you know by fakes, that he just puts out new amazing stuff every year and that's his strategy is just keep moving faster than they can copy you and so Outrun them. Yeah, you got to outrun them, yeah.
Speaker 1:I feel like you know there's, you know, people wanting to copyright something. They've just thought on a whim in mid journey of just thought on a whim in mid-journey, but you've got like a whole concept and you've got like a story and like a whole backstory about your images, almost like that's a whole other concept that could be copyrighted in its own right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's potentially more. I don't know the copyright laws, but yeah, Look it may have.
Speaker 1:I guess it's the same with any art, though, isn't it, that has, like, an idea and a concept behind it?
Speaker 2:Well, an idea and a concept behind it that well, I guess most art requires a human into a level of human intervention to be eligible for copyright, that you need to have done enough as a human to affect the creation of something in order for it to be eligible, and so that's. The problem is that the threshold at the moment is just not being met because you know, realistically it's, it's confronting, but you are, you're mining this infinite liminal space of infinite universes of images and just it's more of a mining thing. You're going looking for these nuggets of gold in this infinite.
Speaker 2:You know billions of trillions of images that could exist and would exist world, and you're bringing back what you know, you think of the nuggets to take with you. You're not creating them in the same way that I would for a work that I fly across the world to photograph, and so that is confronting for some people and it leads some people to really lean into skill worship, which is something that I'm not that into. I love the skills that I have and I would be sad if photographic skills died out and no one could do it, but I love creating images and I love seeing amazing images, and so, if you know, it's what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:I'd also like to think that it's a new skill that is being created, right? I mean sometimes if something it's more of maybe an evolution of skill rather than a disappearing skill. But I wanted, to go back to the awards thing, because I'm really fascinated with that. You know, like photography awards, and I've seen that there's been. You know, ai images win photography awards and I'm fascinated by the fact that. Is it still considered to be photography? It's not really, is it? So how does that work? Like I don't get that.
Speaker 2:There's been a few cases of it. In the first case it was really early mid-journey and it was not disclosed that the image was AI. And then, once it was, there was quite a bit of backlash. There was another case where a guy got it in to win to prove a point, but then revealed it as he won and kind of didn't want to take the award yeah, um, so we are, but then some some competition is going too far.
Speaker 2:There's a photographic award for a western Australian institution that says that we can't even use generative fill and photoshop to remove a light switch or anything like that.
Speaker 2:So even if you shot it on film and scanned it and you want to use that to take 10 pixels away, they've gone completely that direction. We are finding the Bonas Prize, which is one of the premier Victorian photographic awards, got a $30,000 prize and has been going for many years. They are trying to find a balance by saying you know, if you are using elements of AI as part of your process, you can tell us about that and we'll consider it, but if your entire process is AI, my images would not be eligible, because I, strangely, I'm not mixing the two. I'm trying. I'm definitely muddying my own waters a bit, but I'm trying to keep my photographic works as they are and uh and AI works as a separate thing. Not that I'm, you know, really delineating it on my Instagram, but I, in my mind, I'm not blending the two concepts yeah, okay, yeah, and is that what it needs to be with those?
Speaker 1:So the awards that I would have seen weren't created specifically in AI. They're a combination of photography and AI. Is that how they sort of sit in those?
Speaker 2:No, they were.
Speaker 1:I mean in the cases that have made headlines.
Speaker 2:They've been 100%.
Speaker 1:AI Fully created.
Speaker 2:They've been fully AI, but they've just been people kind of trying to prove a point by putting these images in and showing.
Speaker 2:And that you can't tell the difference, kind of thing I mean, god, looking back at the first one that won, when you see it now, it just looks it was mid journey, version three. Everything was super scrawly and weird it. But you know, it's like when we grew up with video games and you're like, wow, it's so realistic, it's never been better. And then you look back and think, wow, that is blocky crap, you know. And it's same with when you go back and use an old smartphone. You're like, and this is slow.
Speaker 2:You know, we're getting faster, we're getting sharp and our, our standards and our tastes change all the time and, I guess, the speed of everything. So, yeah, looking back, they seemed pretty obvious. But yeah, I think awards are gonna have a tough time finding the balance of. I think the bonus probably strikes at the best. They just say you can use it, tell us how you used it, we'll work out whether we think that that still makes you eligible or not. And it's on a case by case basis and I think that's, you know, laborious, but probably the best approach.
Speaker 1:I really like what you were saying then about um, using ai to really refine your taste, because, um, when I first jumped onto, I think the first one I used was dali and I was like this is revolting yeah, images are so disgusting, what is everyone? Going on about yeah, and then I went on to mid journey.
Speaker 1:I was like okay, this looks a bit better, but um, you know it does take a lot of uh, you know, not a lot, but a bit better. But you know it does take a lot of, you know, not a lot, but a bit of trial and error to get something in the aesthetic that you like. So how do you think AI could help, or how has it helped you? You know, evolve your taste.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a wild journey. I mean, I think that there's another thing at play. Is that, psychologically, when you're looking at other people's work, it's guiding you. It's this kind of layer of you know do you like them, do you want to like them, do you not like them, do you admire them, do you hate them?
Speaker 2:I think that whenever you're looking at other people's work which is, you know, realistically, people's work, is what we've been doing, you know, on pinterest, when you're looking at interiors, is it? You know, a studio demario project, do love them. You know it guides how you interpret that, how you kind of compartmentalize that image in your head, whereas when you're using Midjourney, it's creating hundreds of images that I'm just responding to on a total impulse basis and loving it, hating it, loving it, hating it. And you know something that amazed me today doesn't amaze me anymore, you know tomorrow, and I think that that's good.
Speaker 2:I think that, for me, my artistic process has been to create a huge amount of images and try and learn from them. And if I can't look back at a photo I took five years ago and think of 10 ways that I would do it better than I, haven't learned anything, and so, yeah, I think it's just been a really interesting exercise to look at images and think about do I like it, why do I like it, what's the composition? But I'm doing that in a quarter of a second, as fast as I can, to just ingest and ride this strange wave of overwhelm and disgust and boredom and excitement, of overwhelm and disgust and boredom and excitement, and it's a journey.
Speaker 1:It is not a mid-journey, it is, it's a max journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a max journey.
Speaker 1:Nothing mid about it. Oh my God, you know it's so weird because I think when I first started and you know, using these image generation kind of AI, it was like you know, it's really great, it's a blank canvas so you can start creating images. And then I started using it. I'm like actually it's not a blank canvas for me. Anyway, I need to have my ideas first, I need to have you know with my prompts.
Speaker 1:I have like a course on this for interior designers because I really love to you know other, mostly women in the course, but I really love empowering women to use AI, because I know it can feel kind of scary and, and you know, you go on to mid-journey and, to be fair, like within two seconds, there's some Star Wars reference image or Superman that pops up. I'm like, oh my God, what the heck is this? Can we just like help balance this out a bit? But you know, it's just, you need to have your own tastes first. You can't let it dictate to you your taste. So you know when you're using your prompts, you know who are your favorite designers what era of architecture and what I've found really fun is that mashup as well.
Speaker 1:Like you know, those unexpected worlds coming together and it's creating something so weird and cool and it's just fun and like apologies in advance for anybody who's signing up to mid journey right now and you'll, you know you'll be at your keyboard at one o'clock in the morning, like it can get pretty addictive, um, but yeah it can it's really it is really weird, it's really fun it is, I would say that, actually the newer algorithms, version 6 and 6.1, I I don't, I'm not really, I don't like them at all.
Speaker 1:I'm, I'm a version 5.2 guy yeah, and it's can you choose which version you use? Can you go back?
Speaker 2:yeah, you can yeah, you can roll back, yeah, you can roll back just photographically they look over processed they yeah, it's got some weird photographic styles that are not particularly reversible or workable. Those images are just broken from the start and if I tried to work with them they would just fall apart. So, um, I think it's also really interesting an exercise that I've done a few times. That is kind of controversial. If I've got somebody who's kind of like you can't put in a designer's name, then you're just, you know, ripping them off, and part of copyright, um, is that there's no copyright in a style. So so I think that's a really important thing to say from the outset that no one's ever been able to copyright a style. So if you've got a recognizable style, that's never been able to be copyrighted.
Speaker 2:But something that I like to do is show people this prompt where I type a postmodern building by Michael Graves. And so Michael Graves was a great architect and prolific designer, but he only built about eight or 10 buildings. So I can have them up on a screen. Google will show you every single realized Michael Graves building. And then you start producing all these wacky postmodern buildings that are totally bonkers and wild. None of them look like those Michael Graves buildings. And if I said to Michael Graves hey, did you build this and do you like this? He'd say no, that's terrible, that's not even my style. So it's like where's the problem, you know?
Speaker 2:if somebody wants to put a photo in the style of Tom Blatchford. It's not going to get to somewhere that I would think is actually close enough for it to be a problem, and so I don't know. I think there's a lot of discourse of people who maybe haven't produced a huge amount of stuff that might be in the data set and are assuming what it might feel like. But personally, very personally, my thoughts of having a lot of my work that's recognizable in the data set and producing a huge amount of work is that there is no real correlation in terms of stepping on my toes. It's not good at producing stuff that looks like mine, so I go and produce stuff that looks totally new of how I want images to look. So yeah, I guess that's the only thing is the people that I find are most enraged about AI have not used it very much at all and don't understand how it works.
Speaker 1:That is funny, isn't it? Yeah, you just need to jump on it. It would be a lot of assumption.
Speaker 2:I think A lot yeah.
Speaker 1:I found it really interesting, Lauren, how you were bringing up I think we've talked about this before that you've got predominantly women in your courses, but that we've seen time and time again how AI leaves women out of things or puts women into things that are very typical, like show parents playing at a park, and it'll just show women. And the other day I was mucking around with something you can now do like backgrounds in chats in Instagram with AI and just create your own, and I wrote something like you know 40 something women and they looked like 70 year olds and I'm like, well, that's great, that's what the perception is, and and then.
Speaker 1:I tried to find somewhere in between and it would only give me like, let's say, 20 year olds, like really young women or women who looked much older, and put in 50 and you get like full grandma effect and I'm like, well, that's not the 50 year olds I know. So it's just funny how I guess there's a bias to a lot of, isn't there?
Speaker 2:there's so much bias. It's, it's the bias is a big problem. The bias towards the English-speaking world, which is only going to get worse because most of the data set was English-speaking. The bias towards, you know, stereotypes and you know unfair portrayal and misrepresentation. There's a lot of problems. You know Huge amounts of potential and current actual problems with, with ai, that is, you know, uh, many, many podcasts unto itself. So I guess, as we, you know, sit here extolling its virtues, there's obviously a a dark side to it. Um, you know, I've, even if you type in a portrait of an architect, it pretty much just gives you men. Oh, it's all men, I've done all of those fun exercises, ted Talks, all men in black turtlenecks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know but I read this book by Tracy Spicer called man Made. You know she's a journalist. Yeah, and that was really fascinating and it's about AI and how I guess all of those biases are coming out about. Ai and how I guess all of those biases are coming out. So I suppose I felt so enraged, annoyed about it, that I was like right.
Speaker 1:Come on, women, let's get together Like, let's just, in our tiny, tiny, minuscule way, just at least give it a go, put some beautiful imagery into Midjourney to help train it towards something a bit more beautiful than what I was seeing in there. It's just so much garbage.
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, that is the brilliant thing, you can do, though, sorry, I was going to say you can train it, though right, I don't know. You can train your own models, but it's a much nerdier affair. Your journey is not really taking that much on board. You've got to then get to some very nerdy levels to be training your own, your own data set. But it's possible. It's, it's possible, but time definitely time consuming yeah well, um, everybody that's listening.
Speaker 1:We're actually not even real. We are just ai robots. It's been talking to you this whole time. No, just kidding, just kidding, we're real, we're real. But I mean, this is where it's going as well.
Speaker 2:Well, this is what they are.
Speaker 1:I know right, we're probably just living in the matrix. The evolution's already happened of AI taking over and we're not able to you know. So do you have any you know ideas of where AI, in terms of image generation, will go Tom Anywhere, anybody?
Speaker 2:wants it to. I think it will just be able to do anything you want it to very precisely pretty soon. I mean, we're already pretty much there. With a few tweaks, you can pretty much get it to make whatever you want, and so it will be able to generate an image of anything that you want, whether it's something that should exist or not.
Speaker 2:And yeah, we're going to have to deal with the repercussions of that. That is going to be our next decade of trying to work out what is left that is authentic and how to verify what we're seeing. So that's a scary time to be alive, and the persuasion that AI will be able to have is the kind of next frontier of how much AI can persuade us to do things. So yeah that's going to be a bit scary.
Speaker 1:I've always sort of thought that AI can be like it can either save humanity or it could be our greatest downfall. I really feel like there's this sort of moment that's going to happen where, and because it is moving so fast and I think there's so many people that just don't understand its capabilities that there's a lot of just people just kind of going along unaware while a lot of other people are kind of working on this in the background. And if we have the wrong people working on the wrong things, it could be quite grave for humanity. But if we have the right people working on the wrong things, it could be quite grave for humanity. But if we have the right people working on the right things, it could solve so many problems. Like, the potential is amazing but it's quite scary. Without we don't know, there's no way to tell.
Speaker 2:The scary part is humans wielding AI.
Speaker 2:I think it'll get to a point where it's going to be smart enough to just, you know, deal with us as like a cute little ant in its universe. That's mostly irrelevant to it. I think the smartest person that's ever lived maybe had an IQ around 200, and ChatGPT-5 is already over, I think 300 or 400. And so we're exponentially going up from that over I think three or four hundred. And so we're exponentially going up from that in. Within a few years we'll have an ai that is, you know, ten thousand or a hundred thousand or a million iq. That's smarter than every person that ever lived. And so that's when the persuasion thing becomes a problem. If you can, uh, if you, if everything awful we've ever done in all of the human history was by being told stories by mostly probably men, um, you know, with an iq of less than 200, who could convince us to do anything shitty that we've ever heard of, then what happens when, you know, we encounter a being that is infinitely smarter than any of those people?
Speaker 1:And we don't know, you don't know.
Speaker 2:And we're all using.
Speaker 1:AI If you choose not to, or you do, you're using it Like we don't even know in the ways it's's using you. Yeah, messing with us? Oh, it's totally using us yeah but we love you ai, so don't come after us robots yeah, we could.
Speaker 2:I'm always very polite to chat gpt. I say please and thank you so do I.
Speaker 1:Is that funny when we use our manners. I'm like, I'm like, oh, that sounded a bit demanding. I'll just soften that with a bit of a. Please here, so many good things to unpack um what else do we want to touch on? I think that's on that note of doom and gloom. Can we, can we end on a positive?
Speaker 1:hopefully well, um, tom, so we can see your work on your instagram account, which you mentioned before, but there's also the restaurant and you've got an exhibition that's going to tour. So at the moment it's at Healesville, but what was it called again?
Speaker 2:It's at the RACV Club at Healesville and it's going to tour. I guess across a couple more Victorian RACV Club venues that I can't remember right now.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's okay.
Speaker 2:But it is going to be around.
Speaker 1:We'll put the info up. That's all good, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm also working towards a show of AI stuff which will open next month. But it's a little private gallery so I'm not sure how it will get out to everybody in the world, but I'll try and find an opportunity.
Speaker 1:Well, let's look forward to it. Yeah, for them to get out there.
Speaker 2:So that's a new body of work which is all gold inspired, so that's going to be quite fun. You can say that on my instagram, so I'll be sharing it there, and I'm working on a book of my japan series, nihon noir, which I shot over the last, uh, eight years, and so that's coming out in april and that's going to be a beautiful coffee table book and hopefully we'll be yeah, so hopefully that'll be available. Yeah, so hopefully that will be available everywhere and I'm excited about that.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm excited. Oh, I can't wait to see that.
Speaker 2:That's great I love a good book. Thank you so much. Yeah, me too. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Thanks, tom. Well, we're going to wrap the podcast here, but hang around, and if you want to hear some more from Tom, that's slightly more personal tom, that's slightly more personal.
Speaker 2:That'll be on youtubers and bonus content, but um thanks tom, thanks for having me cheers.
Speaker 1:So, um, thank you guys for listening in. And just a quick reminder if you would like some help with the interiors for your own home, I can help you in a course called the style studies essentials, or um, for designers out there, come into the design society for business and marketing and all of the things. Yeah, and in the same show notes you'll find a link to sign up for my soon to be released furniture collections, pre-selected furniture collections and cool trend information, and then, in the future, some short courses on styling and trends as well. So, good Bree, we've got the utmost respect for the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. They're the OG custodians of this unceded land and its waters, where we set up shop, create and call home and come to you. From this podcast today, a big shout out to all of the amazing elders who have walked before us, those leading the way in the present and the emerging leaders who will carry the torch into the future. We're just lucky to be on this journey together.