Will AI Pictures Replace Professional Photography?

I got AI headshots just for fun, and the results were crazy! If you want to see some major AI headshot fails, keep scrolling!

Recently, I’ve been seeing articles about headshots created by AI (artificial intelligence). The idea is that you upload pictures of yourself to a service, and they run them through their AI processor, and then serve up a bunch of pictures of you that you can use for your profile pictures in all your social media, on your company website, etc.

After reading an article and watching a video where the women who tried this showed their pictures, I was super curious to try it for myself. These women both proclaimed how much their AI-created headshots didn’t look like them, but I thought the AI pictures actually DID look like them.

One of the women talked about how the pictures showed what she might have looked like if she had made different choices in her life–if she had chosen a different career or lifestyle. I thought it might be fun to see that, so I decided to pony up the $17 to get 100 AI-generated headshots of myself. 

I was astonished at how cheap it was. And as a professional photographer, I was wondering if this type of AI-generated photography really COULD replace my skills (honed over many, many years) as a photographer.

Turns out, I don’t need to worry at all. The results speak for themselves.

Here’s how it works:

1. First you pay. As mentioned before, it was only $17, and the service I used doesn’t offer refunds. (Once you read this article, the price may have gone up, but it will still probably be relatively cheap).

2. After paying, they give you instructions for how many pictures to upload, and parameters for the best types of pictures.

First, let me show you some of the pictures I uploaded to the AI service. They ask for 10-20 pictures (the more, the better). Since I don’t take a lot of selfies, I didn’t have a ton of pictures to upload, which is why I uploaded a few not-so-flattering pictures of myself. Plus, I wanted to give the AI an accurate representation of my face, and not just submit the really great pictures of myself.

The service I used asks for square crops, but don’t worry about cropping your pictures beforehand, because they allow you to crop your pictures after you’ve uploaded them.

3. Once your pictures are uploaded, they let you choose which types of headshots you want. Outside, inside, glamour, business, etc. You can choose as many options as you like.

4. Then you finalize your selections and they say they’ll send you a link in 1-2 days to download your pictures.

Shockingly, the service got back to me the same day with a link to 100 photos. I was surprised at how rapidly they were able to generate the pictures.

While I was looking through my pictures, I laughed out loud more than once. They were RIDICULOUS! And I wouldn’t use a single one of them for any online profile.

I divided them into three categories:

Pictures that actually look like me

Pictures that look like my sisters (I have four half-sisters)

Pictures that look like a 5-year-old cut out random face pieces from a magazine and glued them together

First, let’s start with the passable images:

Pictures that look like me

Not sure why the AI couldn’t get rid of the grease and wrinkles on my forehead on that last picture. AI fail! If nothing else, this helps me know what I would look like with different hairstyles!

Pictures that look like my sisters

These next pictures look more like my sisters than me. It’s funny, because I never thought I looked like my sisters AT ALL. But maybe we look more alike than I thought.

These first two are like a combo of me and my sister Lisa.

These next two look like a combo of all five of us sisters together, especially the second one.

And this last one just looks straight-up like my sister Joanna.

Now it’s time for the fails!

Pictures that look like a five-year-old cut them out and pasted them together

Now these last pictures really have me flummoxed. Because my teeth are 99% perfect (after 3 1/2 years of braces as an adolescent and Invisalign as an adult). Yet somehow, the AI managed to screw them up so badly, even adding extra skinny teeth in front! It’s so bizarre!

Plus, I KNOW I have big lips and a big smile, but some of these pictures are just out of control with the size of the mouth!

And this is why REAL photography will never die.

Who is this? Honestly, I think somehow this slipped through, because the eyes are not even the right color. This is a total outlier and doesn’t look at all like any of the other pictures (much less like me).

This looks like Ivana Trump, in the worst sort of way. 

Here’s where the teeth start to really go awry.

And here’s where the AI built me an extra skinny tooth right next to my abnormally large front tooth.

Holy why are the teeth so big?

Look at my eyes and teeth! The AI really screwed up here!

And this one has got to be the absolute worst! I look like the Joker’s long-lost sister!

So there you have it. AI pictures in all their glory.

If you want to see bizarro versions of yourself too, the service I used is called Try It On. There are probably other services out there if you want to search for alternate options.

Who knows? Maybe your pictures will turn out better than mine. If you do get AI pictures, I’d love to know how yours turn out! 

Leave a comment and let me know what you think about my pictures, and if you get some yourself!