Every New Tool Kills the Last One. Until It Doesn’t.

Painters hated photographers. That’s not an exaggeration. When the camera showed up in the mid-1800s, a good chunk of the art world treated it like a funeral. Paul Delaroche supposedly looked at a daguerreotype and declared, “From today, painting is dead.”

Painting, for the record, is doing just fine.

Then, more recently... film photographers had their moment of existential dread when digital cameras arrived. Suddenly anyone with a point and shoot could call themselves a photographer. The craft was being “cheapened.” The magic of photography was laid bare for all to see. A wave of digital native artists soon came up through the business who’d never loaded a roll of Kodak Portra in their life ... and some of them were genuinely brilliant.

Now here we are again. AI generated imagery is the new intruder, and the photography world is treating it more or less the same way painters treated the camera 170 years ago.

Which brings us to Prada.

Their latest campaign “I, I, I, I AM… PRADA” went viral a few weeks ago. It’s a collaboration with artist Jordan Wolfson. Giant feathered birds. Scaly humanoids. Carey Mulligan and Nicholas Hoult looking slightly unsettled by all of it. The imagery is strange, beautiful, and a little unsettling in a way that feels very intentional.

Here’s the interesting part: Prada says AI was used only in post production. They didn’t set out to make an “AI campaign.” But the reaction online didn’t care much about that distinction. People saw something that looked like it could be AI and the debate kicked off immediately... is this compatible with luxury? With craft? With what Prada is supposed to represent?

The Business of Fashion ran a piece asking whether luxury should “stop worrying and learn to love AI imagery.” The framing alone tells you where the tension is. From Warhol to Wolfson, they argued, art has always been driven by the tools that once terrified it. Prada’s campaign might just be making the same case for AI.

Then there’s Reformation.

Reformation has never really been a fashion company that uses technology. It’s closer to a technology company that makes clothes. Their supply chain runs on AI driven demand forecasting. They drop two collections a week ... not two a season ... and hit an 80% sell through rate at full price, which is borderline absurd for fashion. They’ve partnered with XGEN AI to power everything from product search to personalised recommendations on their site.

They’re not agonising over whether AI belongs in fashion. They built the brand on the assumption that it does. And it’s working.

That’s not because Reformation doesn’t care about craft or quality. It’s because they never saw technology and authenticity as opposites in the first place.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got brands drawing a hard line.

Aerie announced a complete ban on AI generated imagery. No digital fabrication. Real models only. A survey of 5,000 shoppers found that 82% want brands to clearly disclose when AI is used, and 61% said they’d actively choose brands committed to human created content ... even at a higher price point.

That’s not nothing.

And it tracks with what we’ve been seeing in luxury too. When consumers know a brand used AI generated imagery, they rate it as less authentic, less premium, less desirable. The effect is especially strong in luxury, where the whole value proposition is built on the idea that someone cared enough to make something properly.

But here’s what I keep coming back to...

This isn’t actually a new argument. It’s the same argument, recycled. Every generation of creative tools has produced the same panic, the same gatekeeping, and eventually the same grudging acceptance... followed by a new creative renaissance that nobody saw coming.

Painters didn’t disappear when cameras arrived. They just stopped trying to be cameras. Impressionism, abstract expressionism, modern art... all of it arguably happened because photography freed painters from the obligation to reproduce reality. The camera didn’t kill painting. It liberated it.

Film photographers didn’t vanish when digital showed up either. Some of the most sought after work today is shot on medium format film. There are entire subcultures built around analogue processes. The craft became more intentional, more valued, precisely because it was no longer the default.

I’d bet the same thing is about to happen with AI and traditional photography.

In the not too distant future... probably sooner than most people working in this industry are comfortable admitting.... there will be young creatives who find the idea of picking up a camera slightly quaint. The same way a 22 year old designer today might find the idea of hand setting type a bit charming but deeply impractical. Digital native doesn’t begin to describe where the next generation is headed. AI native is closer.

And that’s fine.

Because AI isn’t going to replace traditional photographic craft any more than the camera replaced painting. What it will do is create a split. There will be brands, probably entire subcultures of them, that double down on the traditional. That find their authenticity and their premium positioning in the analogue, the handmade, the human. There will be others that lean fully into AI generated imagery because it lets them move faster, experiment more freely, and speak to an audience that doesn’t have the same emotional attachment to how an image was made.

Prada uses AI as an artistic tool and gets people talking. Reformation builds its entire operation on it and gets results. Aerie draws a hard line against it and turns that into its brand story. All three are working. Because the decision isn’t really about AI... it’s about knowing what your brand stands for and being consistent about it.

Both tribes can coexist. Both are probably fine.

What I find less fine is the reflexive hostility.

It’s very cool right now to hate on AI. Especially in creative circles. Especially among the people who stand to lose the most from it: photographers, retouchers, stylists whose workflows are about to change whether they like it or not. And I get it. I genuinely appreciate the craft and skill that comes with traditional camera systems. There is something irreplaceable about a photographer who understands light, who can read a room, who makes decisions that no algorithm would think to make.

But I also think the loudest anti AI voices are sometimes confusing defending craft with refusing to adapt. And those aren’t the same thing.

If you’re a photographer or a creative director or a brand strategist, the most dangerous position you can take right now isn’t embracing AI too quickly. It’s refusing to learn what it can do at all. Because at some point, and that point might be this year, a client is going to ask you about it. And “I don’t do that” is a much weaker answer than “I’ve tried it, I understand its limitations, and here’s why we should or shouldn’t use it for this project.”

Familiarity isn’t surrender. It’s preparation...

Prada didn’t set out to make an AI campaign. They made art, using whatever tools the process required, and the result was something people couldn’t stop talking about. That’s probably the healthiest model we’ve got right now.

Not AI first. Not AI never. Just... making the work. And being honest about what you used and why.

The brands that come through this era with their creative reputation intact won’t be the ones who picked the right side of the AI debate. They’ll be the ones who never thought it was a binary in the first place.

Where are you landing on this? Especially if you’re someone who works behind a camera or makes the call on creative direction ...has your position shifted at all in the last year?

If you want to go deeper on how AI is actually being used in commercial photography right now... the tools, the limitations, and where it genuinely fits into a professional workflow ... we covered a lot of this in our latest webinar. You can watch it on demand here: Using AI in Photography