AI in post-processing, a helping hand or a quiet step away from creativity?

[Cyrilbrd]

Over the past few years, AI features have started appearing everywhere (from Canon’s DPP4 and Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop to Topaz Labs and DxO PhotoLab).
These tools now offer everything from automatic masking and background cleanup to intelligent noise reduction, lens correction, and even subject recognition.

There’s no doubt they make post-processing faster and more accessible, but I can’t help wondering if we’re slowly trading away a part of the creative process.
When AI decides how much detail to recover, which tones to smooth, or what looks “natural,” are we still the ones shaping the final image, or just curating what the algorithm suggests?

So, I’m curious:
How much of your current post-processing workflow uses AI-based tools (Topaz, DxO, Adobe, etc.)?
Do you feel these tools enhance your creative control or dilute it?
At what point does “AI assistance” start to feel like “AI automation”?

I’d love to hear how others in the community view this shift. Is AI a genuine helping hand, or are we quietly stepping away from the hands-on creativity that made photography so personal in the first place?

[TomRamsey]

I don’t mind it in noise reduction, or maybe stitching a pano, but when you start changing the elements of a photograph it is no longer a photograph to me, it turns into graphic arts with photographic elements.  It should be labeled as such.  

[Tintype_18]

I'm not enthusiastic about AI but lean toward the creativity of the human mind and it's imaginative underlying aspects. I subscribe to a statewide Facebook page that deals with photography across the state of Tennessee. Plainly speaking, photos, composition and a variety of locations are awesome.

[johnrmoyer]

I have not liked the results from AI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_intelligence) 

I prefer algorithms that I can read about and learn how they work.

For example, usharp mask algorithm is well known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsharp_masking 

Another example: https://docs.gimp.org/3.0/en/gimp-filter-gaussian-blur-selective.html and https://docs.gimp.org/3.0/en/plug-in-despeckle.html 

For decades, I have liked a median filter for noise reduction. When followed by unsharp mask, it can make a grainy photo look better. A median filter works well for removing noise from many kinds of measurements.

[TimBird]

The harpsichord was a perfectly good instrument for Mozart to write and perform music, and no one would suggest he was a slouch. Then the piano came along. The advancement of the instrument enabled, and indeed inspired discovery of new forms and styles of music. Was Mozart's genius rendered worthless? No. And certainly neither was the piano displaced by the synthesizer. Music simply made a transition from analog to digital, and so has photography.

Tools and technology aren't an impediment to creativity. They are a conduit to a new form of creativity. I expect that  some of the output of new tech may not be to everyone's liking, but it all comes down to what you do with the tools. AI has helped me speed up processes that used to take hours for me to do manually, but I'm still the guy aiming the camera, pressing the shutter release, and processing the photo in post... and I consider myself to be a more traditionalist, stylistically.