Did this New Chinese AI Image Generator Just Kill Professional Photography?
Sept. 9 2025, Published 2:25 a.m. ET
The latest AI image generation tool from Chinese tech brand ShengShu Technology just blew the doors off the professional photography world with a new feature that allows users to combine as many as seven images to create entirely new, true-to-life photographs. The software is called Vidu and it currently competes with other image generation tools including Google’s latest Nano Banana tech. Could this be the end of photography as we know it?
Is this really the death of professional photography?
Vidu just announced a new feature called ‘Reference-to-Image’. It pushes past previous generation AI tools that were capable of combining a maximum of three reference images, upping the ante to seven images. This means fast and easy creation of much more complex and detailed, true-to-life photos.
It also means having more flexibility to add, alter, or remove objects and people from images with far more precision. Using simple text commands, you can manipulate specific aspects of the image and literally tell the AI how you want the images to be combined. This is a new level of control that allows creatives and designers to produce photo-realistic images in minutes, vastly undercutting the costs associated with professional photography.
Say hello photo generation with built-in intelligence
Vidu also claims to have far greater semantic understanding. It literally has the ability to combine images in a way that makes sense to the human eye. Whereas most AI image creation tools are very much hit and miss when it comes to consistency and realism, Vidu has trained the AI to understand the true intent of a typed prompt.
This means you can add and remove people and objects from a scene with far greater accuracy, producing realistic photographs that look more natural and realistic. It’s pretty much a photographer's dream, and the best thing is, it’s making studio-grade photography more accessible to us all.
Who benefits from these new AI image creation tools?
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For many, the story will be how AI continues to threaten jobs. From admins and accountants, to writers and artists, the threat feels real. However, as many professionals in the photography industry will feel under threat, this new breed of AI tool also empowers people.
One thing is for certain, the day when we can all use a simple AI tool to create realistic, photo-grade images is getting closer and closer.
