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Artistic Impressions: Photographer Rankin and artist Phillip Toledano on the art of AI
Artistic Impressions is our new forum for artists to openly discuss what's on their minds. Photographers Rankin and Phillip Toledano, recently sat down to talk about the impact of AI on their art and its broader implications.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/12/22/artistic-impressions-photographer-rankin-and-artist-phillip-toledano-on-the-art-of-ai
Spark your senses, wake your wonder. Euronews Culture seeks to show creativity in action and inspire our audience to explore the world through the five senses. Start your journey through the best of Europe's arts, gastronomy, traditions and high-end craftsmanship.
Artistic Impressions is our new forum for artists to openly discuss what's on their minds. Photographers Rankin and Phillip Toledano, recently sat down to talk about the impact of AI on their art and its broader implications.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/12/22/artistic-impressions-photographer-rankin-and-artist-phillip-toledano-on-the-art-of-ai
Spark your senses, wake your wonder. Euronews Culture seeks to show creativity in action and inspire our audience to explore the world through the five senses. Start your journey through the best of Europe's arts, gastronomy, traditions and high-end craftsmanship.
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00:00People assume that it does the work for you, but it doesn't.
00:04It's your brain doing the work.
00:05Being upset about it does nothing.
00:07It's like shouting at the sea.
00:08There's nothing you can do about it.
00:10It's here. It's going to continue to be here.
00:12I'm slightly more hesitant in terms of feeling comfortable using it
00:15because of the fact that a lot of the photography that's been scraped
00:20through the whole internet is other people's IP.
00:24And I think it's, you know, we've had this technology just wasted upon us.
00:28Hello and welcome to this first edition of Artistic Impressions or AI.
00:35We'll make no apology for the pun as this is the show where we'll be learning
00:39and hearing from people at the forefront of the arts
00:42about how artificial intelligence is affecting their worlds,
00:46what they do and how they do it.
00:48A picture, it's said, paints a thousand words.
00:51So we're starting today by focusing on photography.
00:54Joining me for a deep dive into how AI is changing the practice,
00:58are two pioneers who've taken radically different approaches
01:01to the technology that's now at their fingertips.
01:04Rankin is a British artist and one of the world's most famous portrait photographers
01:09whose work has graced countless glassy magazines and art galleries.
01:14And Philip Toledano is British-born but moved to live in New York many years ago.
01:18He's a thought-provoking conceptual artist.
01:20His stunning work ranges from photography, multimedia installations, sculpture and video.
01:26Gentlemen, thanks very much for taking time to speak to me here on the programme.
01:30Well, let's get straight into it.
01:32Artificial intelligence, are you for or against it?
01:35You want to go first, Rankin?
01:37No, you go first.
01:40You're four.
01:42I'm more against.
01:44I'm four.
01:47Because, look, I think this is the thing.
01:50I feel that the people who are against it would be the same people.
01:53They'd be the painters who were against photography in the 1850s.
01:55And I think that my job as an artist is to be curious.
01:59My job is to always open every window, to consider every vista and to think about,
02:04is this useful?
02:05Is this not useful?
02:07And in the context of the work I'm using AI for, that work is about the idea of the death of truth.
02:14So, you know, what better tool to talk about the death of truth with the tool that's actually
02:18doing the killing of truth itself?
02:20Well, and I think that, I mean, I respect Philip's position on it, because I've been
02:26using AI for about two years now, and I can see that it is going to be a technology that
02:32we're all going to have to embrace.
02:33But I'm slightly more hesitant in terms of feeling comfortable using it, because of the
02:39fact that a lot of the photography that's been scraped through the whole internet is other
02:45people's IP.
02:45And I think it's, you know, we've had this technology just voiced upon us.
02:51It's not something that we've had any ability to have any recourse to discussion, to discuss
02:57it, to talk about what it's going to do to us, to talk about how good it is or bad it
03:03is for society.
03:04So I feel less comfortable with it.
03:06But I have to be honest with you, it's extraordinary what you can do with it.
03:11And I've been making some work that I really believe is, I wouldn't have been able to do
03:15without it.
03:16So I'm kind of more of a love-hate with it.
03:19Well, given how adoption rates for AI are going through the roof, you know, it's absolutely
03:24everywhere now.
03:26What sort of reactions have you had so far to the work that you've been producing?
03:31My reaction, the reactions I've had, it's been pretty mixed, because I think people are
03:38nervous of it.
03:39There's a lot of eye-rolling when you start to discuss it.
03:43A lot of people kind of bury their heads in the sand about it.
03:46But one of my favourite things that I remember, like when I did an exhibition here called FAIK,
03:54and it was a magazine that I produced, and I did a show of all the work that was in the
03:59magazine.
04:00All of the work was created with AI.
04:02And I remember somebody standing outside this room, actually, looking at the work, and this
04:08one guy was going, God, look at this, it's so wrong, and look at that, it's so wrong.
04:12And then the other guy said, yeah, but look at the rest of it.
04:15Look how amazing it is.
04:17And I think that we're actually past that point of, can it do an incredible job of faking reality?
04:25I mean, it can do such an extraordinary job, and people are talking about glitches, and
04:29those don't really exist if you're using it at the kind of level that I think Philip and
04:33I are using it.
04:34And then kind of philosophically, I think people, I mean, I've had people cry that came to the
04:39show because they felt like it was the death of photography, which I totally disagree with.
04:44And I've had people kind of, you know, berating me on social media.
04:48But I think that you can't, you know, you can't critique this stuff unless you use it.
04:53So many people are prepared to, you know, tear it apart when they've not actually worked
04:58out how it works and what it does and what the boundaries and the parameters of it are.
05:04And as I said, I've been using it for so long now that I feel like I have an understanding
05:09of it that I didn't have when I started.
05:12And it really is extraordinary what you can achieve with it.
05:16Some people say it's not creative.
05:17And I'm like, it's probably one of the most creative spaces I've ever been in working with
05:22because you can literally do anything.
05:24It's limitless.
05:25Whatever you think in your brain, you can make happen.
05:28Philip, let me turn to you now because you've more than dabbled with digital photography,
05:34to say the least.
05:35Do you share those sentiments of ranking?
05:38Well, there's a few things.
05:39Actually, funny enough, this morning, I got an email.
05:42I got a message on Instagram.
05:43F you, F your, F your AI work, F AI.
05:46So I would say that it's very binary.
05:52And I think that it's frightening to people.
05:56I mean, actually, I'd like to just to want something Rankin said earlier about the fact
05:59this technology has been foisted upon us.
06:01It has, but so has every single technology ever.
06:05No one ever sits around and says, would you like a car?
06:07Would you like an iPhone?
06:08These things are just given to us by the inventors or the industrialists.
06:11And either we like it or we don't like it.
06:13But I think that I get that it's frightening for people.
06:18We are kind of at the beginning of the 19th century industrial revolution.
06:22And we don't know how things are going to change.
06:25But being upset about it does nothing.
06:29It's like shouting at the sea.
06:30There's nothing you can do about it.
06:32It's here.
06:32It's going to continue to be here.
06:34And eventually what's kind of laughable and a little bit sad about the AI rage that I
06:38experience on a regular basis is that in a few years time, no one will be talking
06:42about this anymore.
06:43It'll be something entirely different.
06:45I think one of the things that the AI rage happens to touch upon, and this is kind of
06:50a greater sociological issue, is that we like to be upset about everything.
06:53We are living in an outrage economy.
06:55And so people need to be upset about something.
06:58And AI is one of those things.
07:00But I get that it's scary.
07:01But it's also, as Rankin said, it is the most creative tool I've ever used because it
07:08will go as far as you want to go.
07:10So it's entirely up to you whether it's good or not.
07:13And that's quite daunting, actually, when it's limitless like that.
07:16If it is, as you say now, that people can create what's in their minds, almost at the
07:23touch of a button or with a prompt, would you say that this gives everybody the ability
07:27to be an artist?
07:30Well, I'd say no more than the camera gives everyone the ability to be an artist.
07:33Because I think the interesting thing about AI is that, for whatever reason, people assume
07:38that it does the work for you.
07:40But it doesn't.
07:41It's your brain doing the work.
07:43And if you haven't got a good idea, you're not going to have a good image in the same
07:46way that if you can't take a good picture, you're not going to have a good photograph.
07:48There's no difference.
07:49If you can't paint, you will not be a good painter.
07:52You can't, if you can't handle a brush properly.
07:54And there's no difference to me.
07:56Rankin, tell us, you know, because you started off this conversation by telling us you've been
07:59a bit cautious, tell us exactly, if you can, a bit more about how you've used AI, which
08:05AI apps you've used and how exactly it's affected your work and what you're doing.
08:10Well, I've used pretty much all of the image generating apps now, or systems now, some from
08:16Midjourney to ChatGPT or to Gemini.
08:22You know, most of them, I've used the moving image ones as well.
08:25I mean, I'm with Philip on that, you know, to be an artist, you have to have the ideas.
08:31These systems don't come up with ideas that are any good for you.
08:37You have to be able to come up with those yourself.
08:39And you have to learn a craft.
08:41I mean, it is literally prompting as a craft, without question.
08:45You can't just step in and immediately create a style of image across a series of pictures.
08:51You have to be able to learn how to do that and actually to have knowledge of photography
08:56to be able to give the prompt the details that you actually need the image to have.
09:04So for me, that kind of learning how to prompt was, it took me probably about sort of nine
09:11months to learn how to do that so that I could eventually get to a point where I could bend
09:15this generative work to my will so that I could get the stuff I wanted.
09:21And I created a series of images where I had every, I took a lot of flower pictures and
09:27then I created a series of images where I changed the flower, cut the kind of covering
09:33of the flower to skin.
09:35And that took me so long to be able to work out how to do that because actually most of
09:41the systems don't want you to do something like that.
09:43But then when I created that series, I've never seen anything like it.
09:47And I think that that's where I get kind of like super excited because I'm like, well,
09:52if I can create stuff that even with visual effects or with, you know, CGI, you couldn't
09:58do, then I'm going to be doing work that no one's ever seen before.
10:02And I feel like I'm on the edge of that now because I've spent those two years just bouncing
10:07around trying to work out what its capabilities are.
10:10But at the same time, there is a kind of, you know, with photography, you have a kind
10:15of sense of a feeling of there was an exchange between the person or the thing that you're
10:22photographing and the image that you've made.
10:27Whereas with this, there's something empty and kind of ghostly about it.
10:32Now, I'm not saying that that's a terrible thing.
10:35I'm just saying it's a very different thing.
10:36And I think when I'm starting to lean into that, then I start to get quite excited about
10:40that as well.
10:41So and of course, when I'm using my own photographs to maybe generate something that's similar
10:46to that or has an essence in it, then you are doing something transformative as opposed
10:51to completely generative.
10:53So again, it's like where I'm exploring this stuff because I really, really want to understand
10:58what I can do with it.
10:59And I think each artist that's going to really get into this work, whether it's writing or
11:04whether it's music or they're going to be able to find those boundaries of what it can
11:11do that's completely new.
11:12And I think that's where it becomes interesting.
11:15Does this mean then, as you earlier suggested, somebody had commented to you, Rankin, and this
11:20question goes to both of you, that traditional photography is dead?
11:25Should we be reading the last rights?
11:27I actually think that that's maybe not the right question.
11:31I think it was clear to me four years ago that the idea of photography as truth is dead.
11:39And that's been the focus of my work.
11:42Because AI exists, everything is true, and nothing is true simultaneously.
11:46So all my work has been about this idea that photography as truth is dead.
11:50The idea of photography being dead, I don't think that's the case.
11:54Actually, I just want to go back to one thing that Rankin said.
11:56And I find this interesting because you had talked about working with AI was empty for
12:00you.
12:00And I think the mistake, you're quite right.
12:02You don't have the same experience when you're working with AI that you do, of course, when
12:05you're taking a portrait or you're taking a photograph.
12:08You're not in front of a person.
12:09But I think the mistake people make is comparing AI to photography.
12:13Because it looks like photography.
12:14It's more akin to writing.
12:18So when you're a writer, you're in your own world.
12:20You create your own world.
12:22You generate every aspect of that world.
12:24The weather, the emotion, the ethnicity, the feelings, the landscape, the shadows.
12:29Everything is generated in your mind when you're a writer.
12:32And this is exactly what you do when you create with AI.
12:35You are a writer of novels, of books, of ideas.
12:38I also think that, in a way, I kind of disagree with Philip a little bit about the end of truth.
12:44Because I do think that what it does, it actually kind of makes truth a luxury.
12:48And I think it actually makes it more valuable.
12:51So photography will keep going.
12:53Because I think people will actually put more emphasis on not slot, you know, but the kind
12:58of stuff that's actually really important.
13:00Whether that's a portrait or a moment in time.
13:03Or, you know, something that's valuable to the individual.
13:07Like if you're, you know, photography, in its essence, it's about creating memories as well.
13:12So I think people will still want to take pictures of those brilliant moments.
13:17Whether it's an anniversary or a birthday.
13:19Or it's their marriage or whatever.
13:20So I think it will put more weight on those things.
13:24And I do think that the problem that we have, as Philip says, is they're so similar in terms
13:31of how you are consuming them.
13:34But they're very, very different things.
13:36They really are very different things.
13:38I should actually just clarify about the end of truth thing.
13:40Because what I mean by that, I think you're quite right, Rankin.
13:42It'll place emphasis on the personal things.
13:45But what I mean by end of truth is that for about 150 years or so, photography represented
13:50the truth in the context of you saw a picture in a newspaper or in a magazine, that was a,
13:55you're pretty reasonably sure that thing actually happened.
13:58Yeah.
13:59And now with AI, because also the way we access information on the news, mostly through social
14:05media, and you see an image of a thing, you don't really know if it happened or not.
14:09Yeah.
14:09So that's what I mean by the end of truth.
14:11But at the same time, I also think we have to be really wary of the fact that most of these
14:16tech companies are generally, you know, making these systems, they are following the playbook
14:23of social media, which is this, you know, basically separatist, like algorithm, your own
14:30personal algorithm.
14:31And I do think that that, you know, what we're doing is we're piling on the idea of it being
14:37completely fabricated onto an unsuspecting public who maybe are going to be able to think
14:43about what the difference is, but are they going to be able to tell what the difference
14:46is?
14:46And that's why I guess I'm more wary of it than maybe you are.
14:51So let's imagine you both had a unique opportunity, which this is, to talk to those software
14:57developers, the people writing those algorithms, if there are people writing those algorithms.
15:02You know, earlier on, Philip, you said about, you know, nobody asks about, you know, whether
15:05you wanted a car, this technology just comes there.
15:08There's people who are using, you've got your hands in this every day.
15:11If you could put a message out there to say, well, actually, I would want it to take this
15:16direction or this turn, you know, what would it be?
15:19What's on your wish list?
15:20Slow down.
15:20Slow down, guys.
15:22It's like, give, you know, give humanity the chance to catch up because you're moving
15:27so fast.
15:28And it's a, you know, the most scary thing for me is that people that are communicating
15:34with these chatbots, essentially, that's what ChatGPT is, and, you know, forming relationships
15:40with them.
15:41And I think that kind of race to the bottom of, you know, not communicating with another
15:47human, but communicating with something that really does just mirror back to you what you
15:51want to hear.
15:52You know, that's the bit where I get super, super nervous because that is a diminishing
15:57return for human existence and human interaction.
16:01And that's kind of why I, as a photographer, in a way, using AI has made me take more pictures
16:08because I'm more excited with that luxury of being able to have the exchange.
16:13So that's my big fear with these technology companies is like, you're not really taking
16:18that into account.
16:19And when you hear about, you know, children or young people committing suicide because
16:25they've been talking to a chatbot, I think that's when we should all start to get a little
16:28bit worried.
16:29And, you know, that's happened a couple of times now in the last year or two.
16:35So that's the bit that I'd like to say, slow down.
16:38And also, you know, are we really going to race to kind of have, you know, this technology
16:45in every space with every human being?
16:50It's like children really need to be protected from this stuff as far as I'm concerned.
16:53Grave concerns indeed there, which have been shared.
16:56And perhaps this fuels some of the criticisms that have been leveled against both of you,
17:02as you touched on earlier.
17:03Is this going too fast?
17:05Do we need to put the brakes on, Philip?
17:07I don't.
17:08I would.
17:09I think you have to look to history.
17:12I don't think there's been any technology, any revolution where they acquire their own
17:16momentum.
17:17And I think it's unrealistic to imagine that humanity can behave any differently than it
17:24has in the last 30,000 years when a new technology has arrived.
17:28And as I said earlier, we're at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and there are
17:32going to be huge changes in society.
17:33But we also don't know what those changes are.
17:36There's a lot of fear, but there may be extraordinary things that are going to happen.
17:40So I think no one knows what's going to happen.
17:43And in the absence of not knowing, of course, there's fear.
17:47But I think it's, look, I remember being on panels two or three years ago with academics
17:52and there were people talking about, well, we need to make sure we label AI content when
17:56it's out there on the web.
17:57And sure, you should label it, but it doesn't, it's, again, you're shouting at the sea.
18:04You can't, you can't, that's not going to solve anything.
18:07So we're all King Canute.
18:09We're all King Canute.
18:10Yeah, kind of.
18:11No, no, no King Canute's Day.
18:13Yeah.
18:14So are there, are there possibilities of terrible things happening?
18:18Yes.
18:19Are there possibilities of amazing things happening?
18:21Yes.
18:21The bottom line for me, at least, is I don't know which way it's going to go.
18:25I just know that there are extraordinary changes in society and that people are scared.
18:29But that being scared doesn't mean you shouldn't be open-minded and curious.
18:33And also cautious, like Rankin says.
18:37Well, let me, because we're running fast out of time, I'm afraid.
18:40But let me ask you both a final question, final thought.
18:44How do you both see your work evolving with AI?
18:48Well, it's almost a question of, it's actually, it's a, it's a dual question because it's a partnership, because my work will evolve as AI evolves.
18:58Oddly enough, I find that as I've been using Midjourney and as the, and as Midjourney gets better and better, I find that the new versions of Midjourney are less imaginative than the old versions of Midjourney.
19:09It has less audacity in how it imagines the world with me.
19:14So I'm curious to see how, how technology evolves and I will evolve along with it.
19:21And as it evolves, as it becomes more capable, it will open up new doors and new ideas for me, I think.
19:27I think for me, it's like, I, I, I, I go back to the inquisitive thing.
19:32I think that both of us are very inquisitive about what this technology is going to make it possible for us to do.
19:41And when it is limitless, you know, you do, it's, it's, it's a strange kind of precipice really, because you're like so, so excited to jump into it.
19:51But at the same time, you kind of want to know what you're, what you're going to do with it.
19:56So I, I, I really enjoy the idea of being able to do something that's almost impossible in, in any other way.
20:04And I think that the more I use it, the more I'm not kind of beholden to one system.
20:10So I, as I said, I jump around systems and I find that that really helps me being able to find out what's working the best for what I want from it.
20:21But collaboration is, is key to it.
20:23Like without question, learning how to collaborate with this technology is the way to get the best out of this technology.
20:32And that's something that I've only really just learned in the last six, six to nine months.
20:37And the more I almost embrace the fact that I'm using it and stop worrying about what the effect of it is, then the more the work's better.
20:48But I just, at the same time, can't help myself but being a little more cynical than Philip about the motivations behind the tech companies.
20:56And what that means, because fear is, is, is, is within everything to do with it.
21:02But at the same time, I do think that we should have a little bit more responsibility in, in, in, in how we put this onto the public.
21:12A fitting note and a cautious note on which to end.
21:15Rankin and Philip Toledano, thank you for joining me on this program.
21:19I think it's fair to say in summary that you're both in favor, but with a hint of caution over this new technology.
21:26Thanks very much for your time today.
21:28And thank you for joining us here on Artistic Impressions.
21:32Do join us again.
21:33We'll be back very soon.
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