Generative AI Has Potential to Undermine Important Business Partners

Business often has a dog-eat-dog reputation, but that is ultimately foolish. Any company depends on others. Not just customers but the intricate web of service and product providers that make operations possible.

A current example is in photography. As Fast Company recently reported, “Adobe marketing materials seemed to suggest it could replace photographers with AI outraged many customers, further igniting an ongoing battle between tech companies and creatives.”

The magazine noted that “the trouble began with a page on Adobe’s website that touted Photoshop’s “generate background” feature. ‘Skip the photoshoot,’ it read. ‘Add or replace a background that matches the lighting, shadows, and perspective of your subject,’ all in a few in-software steps.” (They have since taken the “skip the photoshoot” wording down.)

The American Society of Media Photographers issued a letter with the following opening, “Adobe, you might imagine that asking your users to “skip the photoshoot” as you did in a recent set of ads would be a clever way to promote your new tools in Photoshop, but instead, this campaign indicated a shocking dismissal of photography and the photographers who have dedicated their lives to creating it.”

This long-standing professional organization with 6,500 members is reasonably concerned about “the average photographer having to navigate stolen images, copyright infringement, broken business promises, and now, the specter of wholesale replacement of their art and craft by AI platforms.”

Here’s where things connect with a business in commercial real estate. A company needs services. Photography of premises as they exist with insight into how to use lighting, composition, framing, color, photographic and retouching tools, market savvy, and the all-important ability to evoke visually emotional communication.

The same is true for graphic design, writing, social media construction, financial analysis, and other activities. People who hold deep expertise that can help shape ideas, warn of mistakes before they happen, and gain efficiency and effectiveness in what you’re trying to achieve.

Many companies will opt to save money and have software offer all sorts of things that humans would charge more for. And it may make sense to use them at times. Why bother to hire an editor to do a first round of spellchecking? The editor, though, will look for inconsistencies and other mistakes, strengthen arguments and communications, and help develop a voice that doesn’t sound like every other AI-generated bit of text.

It will cost you money but use your business partners to help keep them around. Get them to provide the advantages you won’t get from a machine, and in doing so, show them support. Strengthen the business relationships you have, because you’ll never have a real one with software.