Almost two years ago, Berlin-based artist Boris Eldagsen made headlines after winning the prestigious Sony World Photography Award for an AI-generated image, only to turn down the award. “AI is not photography. Therefore, I will not accept the award,” he wrote on his website. In a separate statement made a week later, he added an important question: “But what is it?”
When AI photo generation programs such as Midjourney and Dall-E became popular, people making photos using AI jumped into the closest association they had: “AI photos” or “AI generated art.” But creating an image using AI is a different process that deserves a different name. Eldagsen’s suggestion? “Promptography.”
Over the past few years, the term “promptography” has gained a little popularity. The hashtag #promptography has been used over 80,000 times on Instagram. An increasing number of artists are now using AI to tag the images they create. Some, like Montreal-based singer Stefanie Lefebvre or Swedish artist Annika Nordenskiöld even call themselves “promptographers” in their Instagram bios. Here, we outline a growing trend.
What’s in a name?
Peruvian photographer Christian Vince first coined the term “promptography” on Facebook after Eldagsen resigned from the Sony Award. As Vince recalls, Eldagsen reached out and asked him for permission to borrow the name. “I think it’s an appropriate term to describe photorealistic images created from information,” said Vince.
Eldagsen, who studied philosophy over visual arts, told me that some things and processes need the right words to discuss, so he was happy when Vince put forward “promptography”. Some artists have been using “syntography” to describe AI-generated images, but Eldagsen says the word is too red for the artificial clothes he wore in the ’70s to make sense. “‘Promptography’ is clear, because everything that is produced needs to start immediately, because AI has no intention, AI has no will,” he says.
The reason promptography works so well, in his opinion, is because it clearly describes the process. While photography involves a person going out into the world, pointing a camera, and capturing a real moment in time, AI photography involves a person sitting in front of a computer, shaping words into images. The “act of pointing” once described by the curator of the Museum of Modern Art, John Szarkowski, has become an act of inspiration. And by describing AI-generated images as ‘promptographs,’ we tell people the difference. He says: “You can’t call a picture a photorealistic painting.” “Apples are not potatoes.”
According to Belgian film director Francois Mercier, who goes by the nickname Mr. Francois, the dissonance goes back to the etymology of the word. Breaking it down, the word “photography” comes from the Greek phōtós (meaning “light”) and graphê (meaning “drawing or writing”.) The word literally translates to “drawing with light,” and as Mercier points out. : “that doesn’t quite equate to AI-generated images, does it?”
Mercier recently published a book of 300 promptographs—that’s the name he used. In a book titled “Secret Cars,” he used Midjourney to imagine other realities where Lamborghini makes a school bus, or Ferrari makes a motorhome. He says the term “promptography” refers to the way people create images using AI: not with light, but with speed. He says: “Motivation is work.
A mysterious process that needs a name change?
The problem is, most people don’t think of generating images using AI as art, and the term “AI generated images” doesn’t sound very appealing. Without accuracy, the beach, it has no dignity, and completely removes the person from the equation. Could a new label help promote the craft?
According to the artist Marcus Wallinder, whose once peppy, now dark and surreal style has been profoundly reshaped by AI, the word “promptography” gives the process “a sense of purpose and creativity, which helps to distinguish it from the idea that it is AI-generated. images they are simple.”
On top of the knowledge needed to define artistic trends or movements, artists working with AI often spend hours creating, iterating, and fine-tuning their input, and sometimes hours editing and polishing the final image. Eldagsen likens the process to that of a mixologist creating an improvised cocktail. Partner of the Pentagram and author of Artificial Typography Andrea Trabucco-Campos likened it to that of an art director or curator.
For Wallinder, the process is “like being a set designer, a lighting technician, a costume designer, a makeup artist, a props master, and a stylist—all rolled into one.” “While AI brings uncertainty, it is my responsibility to shape that uncertainty into a coherent and compelling vision,” he said.
Only time will tell if the name will really stick or if most artists will continue to use other names that catch everyone’s attention. For those who remain against AI, the name may not matter. As one artist put it on Instagram: “Promptographer is someone who pretends to be a photographer, while not knowing anything about photography or its rules, but instead uses AI to do all the work and take all the credit.”
Perhaps the word “promptographer” is very close to the word “photographer” and the closer, the more insulting. But the rise of the “promptographer” seems to reflect the growing acceptance of AI as a “legitimate artistic tool,” as Wallinder puts it. The biggest test, I think, will be if the word ever makes it into the Oxford English Dictionary.
