Why artificial intelligence will replace the family portrait
I am investigating what photography is in the 21st century and if it still represents who we are in the same way since its invention. But the question is wrong. It is not what photography is. Technology will always invent a new version of photography. The end of photography was falsely claimed when digital usurped analog photography. And while that was a revolution of sorts, it was never-the-less just another re-invention of image making from a long list that began with the Daguerreotype right through to 35 mm, DSLR, and smartphones. The question instead needs to address the end of the photograph and all its technological reinventions as the vessel of identity.
The relationship between photography and familiar identity and mourning constructs a narrative that gives meaning to life experiences. But the photographic portrait can longer represent who we are and how we connect with others. My research aims to explore the development of photographic portraiture in the 21st century and examines the emergence of new forms of identity-making in digital media. I will examine the relationship between identity and portraiture and how photography has been used as a medium of communication with the dead in Victorian times and how it compares to 21st-century bereavement practices. Looking at interactive representations of the dead in the grieving process, I will seek to situate the emergence of artificial intelligence in the genealogy of portraiture and will argue that the photographic portrait’s one hundred and fifty-year reign as identity referent will be replaced by an AI multimedia autobiography.
My interest in the personal family archive for this research is as an autobiographical tool that along with digital technology such as artificial intelligence, will build a comprehensive self-portrait that would demonstrate the next consumer-led technological revolution. The revolution is the end of photography’s 150-year reign as an identity referent. The photographic portrait will be replaced by artificial intelligence technology that captures an interactive 3-dimensional vibrant machine learning autobiography of a 3-D image of a person that will act as our identity referent. I believe a 21st-century portrait is more than a single image captured on a device. I believe a true portrait in the digital age is an autobiographical virtual interactive dynamic multimedia 3-D projected portrait. This autobiographical portrait or life story would store information about our lives as a timeline of cultural, social, and personal, familiar life as a Holographic Autobiography App.
American-Brit Ginger Liu is the CEO/Founder of Ginger Media & Entertainment and a Ph.D. student in photography and artificial intelligence. She is a journalist and author, photographer, and filmmaker.
