A new term has slowly been gaining traction on social media. Will it last?
Almost two years ago, the Berlin-based artist Boris Eldagsen made the headlines after winning the prestigious Sony World Photography Award with an AI-generated image, then rejecting the award. âAI is not photography. Therefore I will not accept the award,â he wrote on his website. In a separate statement made a week later, he added an important question: âBut what is it?â
When AI image-generation programs like Midjourney and DALL-E went mainstream, people making images using AI jumped to the closest associations they had: âAI photographyâ or âAI-generated art.â But making an image using AI is a different process that deserves a different word. Eldagsenâs suggestion? âPromptography.â
Over the past few years, the word âpromptographyâ has been slowly gaining traction. The hashtag #promptography has been used more than 80,000 times on Instagram. An increasing number of artists are now using it to tag images they make using AI. Some, like Montreal-based artist Stefanie Lefebvre or the Swedish artist Annika Nordenskiöld are even calling themselves âpromptographersâ on their Instagram bios. Here, we unpack the growing trend.
Whatâs in a name?
Peruvian photographer Christian Vince first coined the word âpromptographyâ in a Facebook post following Eldagsenâs resignation from the Sony Award. As Vince recalls it, Eldagsen then reached out and asked him for permission to borrow the term. âI think itâs an appropriate term to define photorealistic images created with prompts,â says Vince.
Eldagsen, who studied philosophy on top of visual arts, told me that some objects and processes need proper terminology in order to enable discussion, so he was thrilled when Vince put forward âpromptography.â Some artists have been using âsyntographyâ to describe images generated with AI, but Eldagsen says the word is too redolent of the synthetic clothes he wore in the â70s for it to resonate. ââPromptographyâ is clear, because everything that is generated needs to start with a prompt because AI has no intentionality, AI has no will,â he says.
The reason promptography works so well, in his opinion, is because it so clearly describes the process. While photography involves a person venturing out into the world, pointing a camera, and capturing a real moment in time, an AI image involves a person sitting in front of a computer, shaping words into images. The âact of pointing,â once described by John Szarkowski, a former director of photography at New Yorkâs Museum of Modern Art, has become the act of prompting. And by describing AI-generated images as âpromptographs,â we are telling people the difference. âYou wouldnât call a photorealistic painting photography,â he says. âApples are not potatoes.â
According to Belgian film director Francois Mercier, who goes by the nickname Mr. Francois, the dissonance goes all the way back to the etymology of the word. If we break it down, the word âphotographyâ comes from the Greek words photĂłs (meaning âlightâ) and graphĂȘ (meaning âdrawing or writingâ). The word literally translates to âdrawing with light,â and as Mercier points out: âThat doesnât quite fit AI-generated images, does it?â
Mercier recently published a book of 300 promptographsâthatâs the word he used. In the book, titled Secret Cars, he used Midjourney to imagine alternate realities in which Lamborghini makes a school bus, or Ferrari makes a motor home. He says the word âpromptographyâ reflects the way people make images using AI: not with light, but with a prompt. âPrompting is the craft,â he says.
A misunderstood process in need of a rebrand?
The problem is, many people donât consider generating images using AI as craft, and a word like âAI-generated photographyâ doesnât sound very alluring. Aside from being inaccurate, it is clunky, undignified, and it completely removes the human from the equation. Could a new label help elevate the craft?
According to artist Marcus Wallinder, whose once peppy, now dark and surreal style has been profoundly reshaped by AI, the word âpromptographyâ gives the process âa sense of intentionality and artistry, which helps to differentiate it from the idea that AI-generated images are effortless.â
On top of the knowledge required to describe styles or art movements, artists working with AI often spend hours crafting, iterating, and fine-tuning their prompts, and sometimes hours more editing and polishing the final image. Eldagsen likens the process to that of a mixologist creating an advanced cocktail. Pentagram partner and author of Artificial Typography, Andrea Trabucco-Campos, likened it to that of an art director or a curator.
For Wallinder, the process is âakin to being the set designer, lighting technician, costume designer, makeup artist, props master, and stylistâall rolled into one,â he says. âWhile AI brings unpredictability, itâs my responsibility to shape that unpredictability into a cohesive and compelling vision.â
Only time will tell whether the word will actually stick or if the majority of artists will continue using other catch-all terms. For those who remain opposed to AI, the word might not matter. As one artist put it on Instagram: âA Promptographer is someone that pretends to be a photographer, while knowing nothing about photography or its principles, but instead uses AI to do all of the work and takes all of the credit.â
Maybe the word âpromptographerâ is too close to the word âphotographerâ and the proximity, too insulting. But the rise of âpromptographerâ does seem to reflect a growing acceptance of AI as âa legitimate artistic tool,â as Wallinder puts it. The ultimate test, I suppose, will be if the word ever makes it into the Oxford English Dictionary.
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