What Is 'Artificial General Intelligence' and Why Photographers Should Pay Attention

How the Next Phase of Artificial Intelligence Could Reshape Creative Work

I recently watched The Thinking Game, a documentary available on Amazon Prime, about Demis Hassabis and the DeepMind team and their work on Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI. It’s one of those rare tech stories that’s both wildly ambitious and quietly unsettling. Not in a sci-fi “machines take over the world” kind of way, but more in the sense of what does this mean for how we think, create, and live?

I thought it might put me to sleep, but it turned out to be very interesting and an easy watch. Regardless of your opinion on AI, I recommend it. Naturally, I found myself pondering what AGI could mean for the future of photography, music, film, and other forms of creative work. Not someday, but starting now, as the edges between human creativity and machine assistance continue to blur.

We’re Not at AGI Yet, But It’s Influencing the Tools We Use

Let’s get this out of the way: we’re not there yet. Current models such as GPT-4o, Gemini, Claude, or image tools like Midjourney, Flux Kontext, and Photoshop’s Firefly are all examples of narrow AI. Incredibly useful, often surprising, sometimes frustrating, but not general intelligence.

Still, the pursuit of AGI is already reshaping the landscape. Even if we never reach the kind of AGI people speculate about, the momentum behind it is changing how we work and how we think about work, especially in creative fields like photography.

What Happens When Creativity Becomes a Shared Process?

As many of you know, we’ve been experimenting with AI tools for quite a while, not as random generators, but as assistants. For us, the goal isn’t to have the machine “make” the art. It’s to strengthen our vision, not override it.

We often start with our own photographs and use AI to help with alternate moods, palettes, or structural changes we might not have considered or want to explore. It’s more of a collaboration, one where we set the direction and ask the questions, and the machine helps us answer them, sometimes in unexpected ways, but more often than not, in the direction we sought.

That’s where I see the future headed. If AGI ever reaches the point of understanding ideas across different kinds of input, such as visual style, intent, subject matter, and emotional impact, it could become an even more helpful tool. Of course, there’s also an argument that it will become a monster we can’t control.

More on that further below…

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