Photography’s Truth Is Under Attack and Giving Up Is Not an Option

As generative AI technology proliferates, making it easier for people to manipulate real photos or create convincing fake ones from scratch, photography’s ability to depict reality has come under increasing attack. A recent Washington Post opinion is among the most notable assaults on the institution of photography yet, garnering strong rebuttals from veteran photographers.

“When I started creating images with artificial intelligence four years ago, it was immediately apparent that our long and complicated relationship with the photograph — or more precisely, the photograph as truth — was over,” writes conceptual artist Phillip Toledano in an opinion for Washington Post.

“For roughly 150 years, we believed that the camera told the truth. We believed that a photograph was a kind of evidence, a certificate of reality. You saw a picture in the newspaper, and you knew that what it showed had happened,” Toledano continues. “But that era has ended. We are now living in the era of historical surrealism.”

There is no denying that generative AI and associated technologies have made photo manipulation easier and more accessible than ever. Likewise, as Toledano admits, photographic manipulation did not begin with AI’s arrival on the scene. People have edited photos for nearly as long as they have been capturing them.

However, the leap from the fact that it is possible for photos to be generated from thin air to the suggestion that people can no longer trust a photograph is too great for some to stomach.

NPPA’s General Counsel Responds

In response to Toledano’s opinion piece, Mickey H. Osterreicher, photojournalist and general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), responded to Toledano’s polemic in a newly published Letter to the Editor in the Washington Post.

Stop the collapse of credibility

Phillip Toledano’s Jan. 18 online Opinion commentary, “What comes after ‘seeing is believing,’” treated the collapse of photographic credibility as an inevitable and even philosophically liberating development. That framing is deeply troubling.

Photographs have never been immune from manipulation, but for more than a century, they have carried a presumption of good faith and verifiability, grounded in professional norms, transparency and consequences. That presumption is what allows images to function as evidence in courts, newsrooms and the public square.

The suggestion that we should simply move on from that framework may be an interesting provocation for an artist, but it is disastrous for journalists, historians, human rights investigators and anyone who relies on visual documentation to challenge power. We are already seeing governments and bad actors exploit this moment, dismissing authentic documentation as fake while flooding the zone with synthetic imagery. If anything, this moment demands a doubling down on provenance, labeling, standards and professional accountability, not a quiet acceptance that seeing is no longer believing and that meaning alone is enough.

At the National Press Photographers Association, we recently warned against government manipulation of press images and reaffirmed the ethical obligations of accuracy, transparency and accountability that underpin visual journalism. Our Code of Ethics and initiatives such as Writing With Light exist precisely because meaning without credibility is not liberation. For journalism, it is surrender.

Separately, Osterreicher sent along another thought to PetaPixel worth considering:

“By analogy, Shakespeare seems to have anticipated this moment in history, when his witches chant, ‘fair is foul, and foul is fair.’ In today’s visual landscape, that inversion of turning truth on its head has become literal. Authentic photographs are dismissed as fake, while AI generated images are accepted as real if they fit a preferred narrative. The danger is not merely aesthetic or philosophical. It is evidentiary. When truth is treated as suspect and fabrication as plausible, power gains a ready-made excuse to deny reality itself.”

Award-Winning Photojournalist Reacts

Osterreicher is not the only voice to come out against Toledano’s opinion. Peabody award-winning journalist and photographer Brian Palmer also has strong feelings on the topic. Having spent over three decades photographing conflict, politics, and activism worldwide, including in war zones at great personal risk, Palmer has a significant stake in the conversation about truth and reality, and the importance of photography in documenting them.

As a photojournalist and as a citizen, I disagree with Phillip Toledano.

“For most of human history, truth wasn’t a fixed point,” he writes, “it was negotiated within a tribe, verified by proximity, and sustained by trust. In that sense, we may be returning to an ancient condition: truth as local, not universal.”

That’s a poor reading of history. There is truth reached through inquiry using the best evidence available. It has served societies well, if slowly. And then there is “truth” manufactured by men that denies observable, provable reality. Such “truth” is not negotiated, it is imposed and sustained through terror and deception. It destroys societies. 

Pause for a minute to consider the homicides of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents. We flock to the footage and blow up social media with opinions. But for citizens to have an honest conversation about what actually happened in Minneapolis — or anywhere else — we must have verifiable evidence. People may fight over the veracity of a photograph or video that purports to be real. But we have ways to examine it, to authenticate it.

Of equal importance, we have the person who captured the images — the human who was there with a camera — to question. We can compare her work to what others captured, talk to the people shown in the frame, examine her track record. We photojournalists are nonfiction photographers; we are accountable for our work. Generative AI is not. It is opaque, a digital black box that fashions hyperreal fictions from prompts, data, and pixels. 

In other words, generative AI is never there, never present in our flesh-and-blood world. It may be good for art and creativity, but it is bad for journalism — and bad for democracy when granted truth-telling status by people such as Mr. Toledano.

PetaPixel‘s Take

Here at PetaPixel, we have very closely followed generative AI’s development, from the earliest models that created frightening monstrosities to the latest that can deliver convincing, photorealistic results that are scary not for their grotesqueness, but the risks they pose. As generative AI has improved, at least in a technological sense, and become more accessible, we have witnessed the trust in photography erode, which is not just sad but dangerous. Photography and the visual record cameras capture are an essential weapon in the fight against misinformation. Cameras are vital tools for documenting reality as it exists and for holding people and institutions accountable, especially when these institutions target the most vulnerable people in society.

If we cannot trust what we see with our own eyes, what hope do we have to engage in meaningful discussions about everything that happens in the world we didn’t see firsthand? If we lose our grasp of collective truth, which is best captured by cameras, we are in deep trouble.

It is because of advances in AI technology and the callousness with which people wield it to shape their view of reality and influence those around them that people must fight to preserve and protect the power of photography, not diminish it. To throw one’s hands in the air and give up on photography as an institution of truth, rather than increase efforts to develop meaningful frameworks for verifying the authenticity of images, is irresponsible.

The truth is out there; it can be witnessed and documented. The rise of AI and the misinformation it enables does not make photography powerless, but it does mean we must approach it with greater skepticism. Investigate, explore, think critically, authenticate, and sometimes even doubt. But don’t dismiss the truth right in front of you.

Anyone who believes that removing a photograph’s hold on reality will usher in a new, better generation of collective knowledge and so-called truth is sorely mistaken. There has never before been a more potent antidote against collective deception than the tangible, visual evidence a camera provides. Why on Earth would we give that up? It’s also worth considering who would really benefit from the dismantling of photographic imagery as reliable, verifiable evidence of reality.

Image credits: Header photo created using an asset licensed via Depositphotos.