I was scrolling through Substack, and Zeemaya Zai's profile stopped me.

Zeemaya is a digital specialist working at the intersection of AI and visual storytelling, someone who thinks deeply about how these tools are actually used in real time.

Her posts got me thinking, and ultimately led me to write this.

One post in particular talked about the pace of change, how what used to require a full production, a team, time, and budget can now be explored in hours. Not finished, not resolved, but good enough to move an idea forward.

I felt it immediately.

You see it in how quickly ideas are being generated, shared, and iterated on. The front end of the creative process, the part that used to take time, has compressed. And that alone is changing everything.

But it also made me think about something else I’m seeing on my side, and something that came up on a recent AI episode of The Community Table, which I co-host. It’s a little quieter and a little more complicated.

It’s not that photographers are being replaced by AI.

It’s that commercial photographers who would use AI are being replaced by in-house agency and brand creatives who are already embedded in the process and using these tools to shape ideas from the start.

That shift is happening across the industry, not just at the level of big campaigns, but in smaller shoots, social content, and early concepting. The spaces where photographers used to be brought in not just to execute, but to think. To shape ideas. To help define the visual direction before anything was made.

What’s shifting is access.

In some cases, the work is happening earlier and staying inside agencies and brands, developing before the need to bring in a photographer fully forms. Not because they don’t have the skill, but because the people inside agencies and brands are already part of the process. They’re in the room when ideas are first forming, when references are being pulled, when directions are still fluid. They have access early.

And if photographers and creative partners aren’t part of the early stages, the ideation, the experimentation, the messy middle where AI is being used most, then they’re not always getting the chance to apply that taste at the level they’re capable of.

And if teams can generate something good enough in that moment, the need to bring in a photographer, even a great one, starts to shrink before it ever fully takes shape. So, in a moment like this, it’s not enough to just be good.

We all want to believe that the best work rises to the top. That taste, point of view, understanding of light, composition, emotion, that those things will always win. And I still believe they matter. Deeply. Maybe even more than before.

When creatives do have the opportunity to bring in outside partners, they’re going to choose the people who inspire them. The ones whose work they’ve been thinking about. The ones who bring something they can’t create on their own.

Which makes the work itself even more important.

It’s something I wrote about in Now That AI Is in the Room, What Do We Do?
A conversation about what’s still in your control when the industry around you is shifting.

Because while access may be changing, the work is still yours to define. And this is the moment to make work that people can’t stop thinking about.

So yes, AI may be faster, more flexible, and less expensive. And, those artists that embrace it might be stronger for it. Time will tell. But that’s only part of the story.

Because the real shift isn’t just about tools. It’s about access.

Who has it early?
Who is trusted to explore?
Who is invited in before anything is defined?

Because the industry isn’t just changing how work gets made.

It’s changing who gets to make it.