Photographer uses AI to create a fake vacation, pranks his followers
Jun 17, 2023
David Williams
Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.
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Welcome to a fascinating world where creativity and technology meld together. Photographers are generally fans of travel and digital art alike. The potential for developing stunning visual experiences is limitless in this era of ever-evolving artificial intelligence. Today, we set out on a unique journey that pushes the boundaries of reality. We tell the incredible story of how a fictitious trip to Finland was painstakingly planned utilising AI wizardry and some London plate shots. My apologies – I lied on my recent Instagram Story, which is on my highlights under the name ‘vAIcation’.
My generative AI vAIcation
We frequently find ourselves enthralled by captivating vacation images that take us to far-off places in a world where social media has become the portal to our desires. In an effort to participate in this digital story, we embarked on a remarkable experiment that would challenge our online community’s critical faculties and push the limits of perception. The ‘we’ I speak of here are myself, Kersen Luts and Micah Burke.
Kersten and I took a walk through the streets of London with our dependable camera, the iPhone, in hand, shooting relatively bland moments at a variety of locations. But it wasn’t the splendour of the city that would command attention. Instead, we would transform these locations into a stunning Finnish hideaway using the power of AI imaging technology, fooling the senses and obfuscating the distinction between truth and illusion.
Our altered and sometimes completely made-up photos of Finland’s beautiful landscapes inundated my Instagram story over the course of three days, reaching the eyes of an astounding 37k followers. The twist, however, is not in the visual trick itself but rather in the audience’s reaction—or rather, lack thereof—to it. Surprisingly, despite the flood of positive comments and likes, only one lone voice dared to question the veracity of my Finnish journey.
This surprising finding raises the intriguing question: How did our AI-assisted deceit go unnoticed by everyone save a single voice? Join us on this captivating journey as we explore the fascinating world of AI imaging developments, analyse the mechanics of our transforming process, and consider the ramifications of a world where reality can be modified at a whim.
As I reveal the amazing tale of how a fusion of AI technology and the streets of London worked in unison to deceive the public, get ready to have your perceptions tested, your creativity sparked, and your wanderlust rekindled. Come along on this journey with us and see how AI imagery can create a picture-perfect vacation that transcends time and location.
Creating the first AI photo – The airport
My journey began at the airport. This decision was critical because as I’m sure you’ll agree, if you don’t check in at an airport on social media, the trip didn’t happen, right? The tool used to create the airport was Generative Fill inside of Adobe Photoshop. Here’s the original iPhone photo: –
I made a decision that I’d gaze upwards as if checking the departure information screen, making the photo a little as if I wasn’t posing. This may have invited the viewer to not focus on the photo too much but instead use their mind to work out what I was doing and where I was going.
To edit this image, I simply used the new Object Selection Tool to select myself, then invert the selection and use the type prompt ‘airport lounge’ in Generative Fill. Some of the seat options were a bit strange but the one I used was the most convincing, although far from perfect. I made selections to add a traveller walking past in the background with a suitcase, and to add the phone and bag on the seat behind me.
Photoshop for non photographers
What’s really interesting about this whole process is that Adobe Photoshop now works in the way that most non-photographers always believed it worked anyway. It’s now possible to simply make a selection and describe what you want, letting Adobe Firefly, the AI inside of Photoshop, do the work. Here’s the other method we used: –
This reindeer inside of a forest shouldn’t have been there. At this time of year, when the mountains are free from snow, the reindeer herds should be up in the mountains foraging moss and lichen in the arctic and sub-arctic tundra. Having the reindeer hiding behind the tree solved two problems: Firstly, this scene was a little enigmatic for the aforementioned reasons. Secondly, AI doesn’t create the best limbs. This particular image was created by Micah from scratch. There was no plate shot for this one – it was created out of nothing.
More Finland shenanigans
Here’s another breakdown: –
I posted this shot of my lunch on day two of the vAIcation but in fact, all of this was created by AI on top of an empty table.
Each of the different items on the table was added individually by selecting an area and entering a text prompt such as ‘meat stew’ or ‘glass of iced water.’ A giveaway for me in this particular shot is the lack of a handle on the coffee cup. I don’t know why that happened because the selection I made allowed for a handle, but I decided to post this shot anyway to see if this would be something picked up by one of my followers to point out the AI. It was not. Another thing that was noticed by Peter Treadway when I ran the image past him to check was the apparent softbox reflection in the spoon, suggesting studio lighting. Again, nobody pointed this out. For this shot I also had a second option created by Kersten: –
I like it, but the amount of lemon in that water seems a little excessive and in terms of a table being genuime for me, it’s unlikely that I’d post a shot without a coffee in it! Speaking of coffee, here’s the shot I posted to show that I’d arrived and was on the road in Finland: –
First off, let’s talk about the road itself. I had worse options, but I also had better ones. I decided to post this one because, at a glance, it looks genuine. However, when you really pay attention to it, it’s fairly clear this is a situation that most civil engineers would avoid. The road width is strange, there’s no drainage between the road and the footpath, and there’s a line of paint in a very peculiar position. What I’ll point out now, though, is that the only thing real is my arm and hand and the lower half of the coffee cup.
Using the method I used before, I inverted the selection of my arm and hand with the coffee cup and prompted Generative Fill to place a road running through Finland in the summer behind. The next step was to remove the lid of the cup and expose some coffee. A rough selection with the Lasso Tool followed by the prompt, ‘black coffee,’ was good enough. The lid was removed and replaced by the rim of the cup and some black coffee. The Wild Bean Cafe would be a giveaway that I was in fact in the UK at a BP gas station so I used the new Remve Tool to paint over the logo which, as if by magic, just vanished.
Lets take a look at what’s happening here: –
This is one of the shots I assigned to Micah, and I asked him to use whichever AI method he wants to put a waterfall behind me in place of the skate park. Here’s the original: –
AI vacation findings
The point of this experiment with AI focussing predominantly on Adobe Firefly built into Adobe Photoshop with Generative Fill was not to deceive the audience maliciously, but to highlight that AI is here and it isn’t going away. There are currently and will continue to be debates and arguments about the proper and ethical use of AI in photography and art. Stock libraries are now accepting AI created images and we’re seeing AI in the news with mistakes in images that are in public view. The images are often far from perfect, however they’re constantly improving. The images I made are obviously fake when you look closely but if it’s jsut a glance, they got by my audience, and that concerns me a little. The Content Authenticity Initiative works to show which images have been ‘Photoshopped’ and perhaps a similar scheme should be in place with AI images. It’s common to see #AIArt on Instagram posts but concerningly, it’s more common to see AI images being pushed out as if they’re real, both by the creators and by third parties sharing. What do you think? Does AI threaten art? Does it need to be disclosed every time?
P.S. A very special thanks goes out to Kersten and Micah for their help with this outrageous project
creating some more “fake vacation” photos
This story was also published on Dave’s blog, a great resource for photographers.
David Williams
Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.
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92 responses to “Photographer uses AI to create a fake vacation, pranks his followers”
Interesting article. There are some nasty telltale signs of a bad photoshop selection in the airport photo that are visible at the default size on the iPad. On the phone though, chances are no one would notice. This little experiment is truly eye opening. Be prepared for the social media floodgates to open and release the fake vacations -:)
Personally I love AI. Have been able so far to rescue 2 small architecture projects of mine where my framing was a little to close to straight the building perspectives properly. Was able to build out the sides of the image. Ordinarily I would do this manually, but Gen Fill is a huge time saver. I think though that the most fun for me with Adobe generative fill feature is some of the absolutely hilarious generations it comes up with. Great fun!
The ethical dilemmas will emerge with a vengeance very, very soon. Recently I’ve read about AI images winning photo contests, but be assured that there will be news people desperate to get a scoop or even simply keep their jobs by faking stuff. It’s probably happened already. It’s no secret that some news photos have been faked through the decades, but now with AI, the amazing ease in performing the trickery is simply mind boggling.
It’s just Photoshop
David Crais unfortunately it’s not.
David Crais it is a generative AI inside of the new Photoshop Beta – meaning you can add and change things you wouldnt believe by using text prompts only.
David Crais hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Stop promoting every idiot who types words into a machine. There are so many people out there who create awesome, creative work by using actual skills. Focus on them, show us their work instead of this worthless nonsense.
Guido Van Damme It’s over man, just gotta wait now
Guido Van Damme if you think the only application for AI is “typing words into a machine” you are clueless. Luddites are dumb.
Robert Hirschi it is when it comes to image generating. Go insult someone else.
Guido Van Damme
Funny how you think working with AI isn’t a skill.
Pepe Guicho Salinas funny you think it is. 🤣
Guido Van Damme hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Andrea da Silva Hilarious. Me, into AI 🤣🤣🤣
Photographers cheering on their replacement is wildly comical… and sad.
Ryan Hoch It’s over. Whether it’s promoted or not, the photography industry is doomed (unless it’s editorial work for news/documentary)
Ryan Hoch nonsense. I’m a professional photographer and I love AI and find it infinitely useful for many applications. It’s not going to replace me. It’s just another tool in an artists belt.
Robert Hirschi – remember ur thoughts in a few years when everyones digital likeness is uploaded to a database and can be inserted into any background with any lighting.
Ryan Hoch paranoid much? lol
Robert Hirschi – Nah, I professional photograph antique cameras. They’re conditionally one-of-a-kind and therefore, cannot be AI generated. Ill be fine.
Ryan Hoch I can generate antique looking cameras all day. But you can’t generate actual events, like a wedding, for a client that needs actual photos of the wedding.
Robert Hirschi – of course you can. But the ones i photograph are for sale and require detail shoots of all imperfections and flaws. That cant be generated.
If every member of a wedding party had a digital likeness uploaded. The entire event could be placed into any scene at any wedding venue from any point in time. Filters and over editing have already given the ability to look completely fake, and they are wildly overused. Why wouldn’t people fake the whole event?
Ryan Hoch well ya. If it’s for sale you need to shoot the actual item. But you’re ridiculously wrong about the wedding. The irony is AI gives the client options. Not taking them away.
Ryan Hoch It’s not just photographers. It’s basically all forms of human creativity. Whatever wonderful creative thing you can think of, there’s a very realistic prospect that an AI will soon be able to do it ‘better’ than you. 😐
Ryan Hoch Sure sure, people will spend thousands on a wedding and then use AI to create fake images of their wedding. So why will anyone hire a wedding photography. In fact why bother getting married when they can just put a net certain on their head and just pretend haha
Ryan Hoch you won’t replace photographers! Some beauty in nature cant be replaced
Ryan Hoch
What do you want us to do? Cut our veins?
There are many situations in which an human photographer is a better choice, but this thing isn’t going away, we can as well play with it.
Robert Hirschi you’re both correct. Actually. AI is a great tool in a creatives shop BUT do understand maybe not our lifetime but soon enough the creative arts will look and be very different. It already has been changing.
Ryan Hoch hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Andrea da Silva – 🥱
Media: https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia4.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FWkKrG4jJYmMmkoAzo2%2Fgiphy.gif%3Fcid%3Dcafe52e9638o5yj72jnu0wj0j8ioo830fdh4ve0jbfhdakzx%26ep%3Dv1_gifs_search%26rid%3Dgiphy.gif%26ct%3Dg&h=AT3MxZj-R9cWW92caVyJi9-oGVAIu8PrlNyELGf6DKKOn_9F-2r57gcRdkJUHub79r-i1hmd9wQYAJ8xNTjCpd_hjBjj_XdnFyiEoVwtA0B9pJ4-CZAZg8Tlbon9f-4f&s=1
Chris Gladdis 😅😅🥴😮💨
Christine Singleton 😬 😅
Christine Singleton hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Dangerous technology
Jason Rosen hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Andrea da Silva I’m not into ai
Andrea da Silva and that’s a hack link just scanned it
No way to know what’s real anymore
Ryan Lengacher hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Promoting AI horseshit instead of actually taking photos? You guys are absolute clowns.  this page is garbage.
Pretty dumb. You can do it without AI with no hassle. So you do not need to gift your data to the service with the subscription to use it.
Michele Marcolin It’s still different from photoshop and more sinister. You still need skills to photoshop but AI, once you get the prompt right, that’s it.
Candace Porth don’t give a Fuck about photoshop too lol, just go outside and take pictures 🤷🏼♂️
Michele Marcolin hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Alex HrbExactly!
Don’t need any AI for these pictures, just good old Photoshop will do.
Ben Kordell At least then one needed to develop the skill to do that, to a pretty darn good degree. It also meant the person had to sometimes buy the base images it needed to create/modify he/she needed or wanted.
With AI? Nope. Barely any skill really, definitely you don’t need hundreds and thousands of hours to be good enough to actually market some stuff. Nor do you need to spend hours on end to create an image.
Ben Kordell hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
I like Nikon’s take: “Even though AI can now generate photorealistic images with just a simple text prompt, Nikon wants to remind everyone that the real world is full of incredible scenes that are best captured with a camera rather than imagined with AI.” https://petapixel.com/2023/06/15/nikon-fights-back-against-ai-images-touts-natural-intelligence/?fbclid=IwAR07TqUjs2KS4NSy0GePtAy5_t_ykdoPcHzGNIqzkXkgRiVwYVFfecYXQok
Like this, you mean?
https://www.diyphotography.net/nikon-pushes-artists-with-natural-intelligence-campaign-but-uses-creative-common-and-old-images/
Like this, you mean?
https://www.diyphotography.net/nikon-pushes-artists-with-natural-intelligence-campaign-but-uses-creative-common-and-old-images/
Candace Porth hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
He should get a life. As all AI freaks should
Lisbon’s Carlos André Viana
The one sounded deflated is you, not him.
Lisbon’s Carlos André Viana hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Soon nothing will matter anymore. Unless we all return offline like in the good old days.
Andrew Galea Debono hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Dim as you like. He’ll be crying when he can’t get any work
Neil Baker
And your alternative is?
Luddism won’t get you anywhere.
Pepe Guicho Salinas don’t promote A.I. it’s the same as a factory worker excited by robotics.. I.e. not too bright
Neil Baker hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
good job !!
Alain Franzolini hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Ai did the work, he takes the credit. How incredibly clever and completely predictable.
Joseph Barrett hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Pathetic!
We Must be on the same vibe! Generative Fill in Photoshop Beta. How to create a composite image with Text prompts.
https://youtu.be/qhjhHBCslUM
i just noticed the robot in the background….cute.
Bev J. Dow-French hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Silvia Del Rosso that’s really cool…
Jesus the guy was just having some fun!! You should all get off your high horses and just enjoy… be more kind
Christopher Czlapka hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Just say no to AI…
Mick Hager hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Mick Hager no
If you’re using AI are you really still a photographer since the AI is creating the images.
Carter Tune hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Carter Tune no and nobody that uses it claims to be a photographer.
I dunno why, but I can tell an AI generated photo. Nothing will be real anymore with AI, then the whole existence would be false.
Faith Oluwatosin Lawal hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
1. The reason your audience didn’t notice (and I hate to break it to you and most people) is that they most likely don’t care. They scroll by see your stuff maybe a like maybe a comment and on to the next million photos of the day. The beauty of IG. You are not unique.
2. While a great experiment – it kinda doesn’t really reveal anything. All the things you did here have been able to do for years – compositing. But now with AI it’s just faster. So posting a bunch of photoshopped pics doesn’t really mean anything – what means something is that it only took you seconds to do it – which cool but ok what does that mean for a person just scrolling through your feed?
At the end of the day if you want to be someone who posts fake photos of themselves you could have done that for years. Now it’s just easier.
Manny Krichel hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Tyler Xian Strilio hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Guy Charpentier hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
Molly J. Anderson hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
who didn’t see this coming …🙈
Pamela Van de Vier hey since your into AI hopefully https://insideofai.com has some uses for you. Please let me know if you come across anything you think is worth using.
People hating on ai as if it hasn’t been improving at a rapid rate over the past few months to the point that in a year it’ll be indistinguishable from real pictures, you just have to accept that it’s a part of the world now like phones TV radio internet etc.Media: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3006204939513798&set=p.3006204939513798&type=3
like uuuu Otgontseteg Kim
Lame
Who TF is mad at this 😂😂😂. Y’all got to have some fun sometimes lol. All them mad faces.
April Elizabeth agreed!