Artificial Intelligence today has a bad reputation for making simple mistakes that it seems people never made. You know, like the good old days when horse-drawn carts delivered your milk before dawn. Fortunately for the horse they’ve been replaced by machines and now live much happier, pampered lives away from the long toil that delivered them to the steps of the knacker’s yard.

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Wedding photographs are ‘real’ because we use cameras that are great at capturing what’s in front of them and make the best use of the available light. Big, fat lenses with plate-sized front ends have real advantages for getting real images. Reality will not matter when AI gets better because other, new things will be created that simply can’t happen if the objective of photography is ‘reality’.

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Imagine an expensive venue with amazing decor filled with well-dressed guests sipping the bubbly, mingling in the large rooms. Everyone is enjoying meeting relatives and making new friends with their new extended family. The venue is expensive because the photographer has been encased in the walls of the building. Dozens of hidden cameras scan the gathering to build up a detailed virtual model of each guest’s appearance. As people move around many angles are examined and the AI brain assembles its deep fakes.

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At the end of the evening perfectly posed assemblages of the guests will be generated without them ever having to pose. For a premium fee an expert (someone who used to be a photographer, say) will create the poses and even candid compositions according to some ineffable knowledge, imbuing a trademark style that no AI can replicate. Yet.

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Some of the venue decor will become virtual — only visible in the photographs. The ceilings can be higher, or absent altogether to reveal the fireworks. The guests and bridal party themselves will wear clothing with virtual accessories and features. Some outfits will be more revealing for the digital eye than for the humans present and even a person’s age may change for the record.

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We live in the moment. Group photos used to be arduous and time-consuming, in the future they’ll be a surprise after the event. For now they’re quick and fun, an ice-breaker and a little bit of social lubrication. The future I describe may be a little uncomfortable for today, but I think we’ll arrive there gradually, turning the Photographer into yet another kind of job. So you see, I will be replaced.

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The grandchildren, of course, will ask Nanny and Grandad why their wedding photos look so boring compared to mummy and daddy’s. Nanny and Grandad will explain that at their wedding Brian O’Carroll walked around with a big camera and the only images they have are the ones that are real and actually happened. The grandchildren will give a wide-eyed ‘wow’ at how primitive those post-covid years were, as children today are incredulous that smartphones did not exist in the 1970s.

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When the wedding photographer's time is up I'll be angling for that utopian dream, a pampered life away from the toil that leads to the steps of the knacker's yard. Until then I'm proud to remain a real work horse.