Still Credible in the Age of AI?
A post I put up on LinkedIn recently got quite a bit more attention than I expected. All of a sudden I was getting connection requests from all over the world… Japan, US, Poland…
It was about a photography website whose portfolio appeared likely to be AI generated. And then came the plot twist where I wondered whether it was even a genuine photographer’s site, or just something intentionally built for SEO traffic or lead generation. Either way, it got me thinking about trust and how easily we take what we see online at face value.
[If you’re interested, click here to read the entire post.]Following that, I came across a small study involving 43 participants that looked at how people responded to websites using photographs versus AI generated imagery.
Before participants knew which was which, they sometimes preferred the AI images visually. But once the use of AI was disclosed, votes of trust moved towards the websites using photographs, especially in areas where credibility is important, such as healthcare and government.
It is a small study, so I would not treat it as conclusive. But I found the result interesting because it says something about the role images play beyond simply looking good.
[If you’re interested, click here to read the study.]Almost on cue, I received this message from a past client.
He had changed his profile photo to one from our portrait session and told me that, shortly after, he received two paid consultation calls.
Obviously one message from one client certainly does not prove anything. But I simply loved the timing.
We tend to talk about professional portraits in terms of looking confident, polished, approachable or credible. There is also something more basic going on. A lot of the time, your profile photo is meeting people before you do. They see it on LinkedIn, on your website, on a speaker profile or beside an email. Before a conversation even starts, they are already forming some idea of who you are.
Does the image feel like someone you would trust enough to speak to, hire or work with? And when you eventually meet that person, does the photograph still make sense? No one likes to be catfished.
See my human approach to professional portraits (pun intended)