AI generated images
Photos with a blurred background are perfect for presenting common scenes such as "supermarket shopping" or "office meeting" without delving into too many environmental details or specific circumstances.
When instructing AI on what to include in an image, it becomes challenging to describe a busy environment surrounding the subject. It is much easier to render the environment as blurred. Consequently, many early AI-generated photos I observe selling on microstock platforms feature a blurred background.
If we imagine a near future where the majority of scenes are AI-generated, the demand for blurred background photography may significantly decrease. However, small aperture photos with detailed and specific environments may still be easier to capture on-site rather than explaining to AI.
This is likely to reduce the demand for wide aperture lenses, while zooms will likely continue to sell.
Object selection enables the application of lens blur in post-production. When AI teams up with precise distance measurement by lidar, this feature evolves into a fully automated wide aperture simulation. It is already present in some smartphones. It is logical to anticipate that AI will gradually take over object separation and background blurring in real-world photography, reducing the market of wide aperture lenses.