The human had the shortcut

Photographic Knowing, Delegated Seeing and Generative AI

The Human Had the Shortcut is a new part of my ongoing Evolved Attention research, exploring what happens when photography meets generative AI — and what remains distinctly human within that process.

The work begins with my own photographs.

These photographs remain unchanged. Rather than using AI to improve, beautify or replace them, I have been using generative processes to ask what happens after the photographic encounter.

Across three separate experiments, bodies disappear, objects are removed or broken, fabrics become traces and a mask remains after the person has gone. What became equally important, though, were the moments when AI got it wrong.

I rejected images. I corrected interpretations. I changed direction when one experiment began looking too much like another. At other times, the system understood what I was trying to do almost immediately.

Those mistakes and conversations have become part of the work. One of the simplest experiments eventually gave the project its title. I asked AI to complete something I could have done myself in seconds. Instructions became tools, files, attempts, corrections and more instructions.

That small moment opened a much bigger question within my practice: what are we actually gaining when we delegate parts of seeing, making, remembering and organising to AI — and what still depends upon human experience and judgement?

The resulting research brings together photography, generated imagery, rejected experiments, conversation and digital trace.

The body disappears.

The trace does not.

Kelly McLean, Evolved Attention, 2026