AI Made My 2004 Call-to-Bar Photo Move, And It Changed How I See Time

It’s amazing how times have changed since 2004, when I was first called to the bar.

The first image is the original photograph from that day in 2004, a still moment, carefully posed, frozen in time. The second is that same photograph in 2025, curated by AI. The difference? In the newer version, I move. I adjust my call-to-bar regalia. I touch my hair. A moment that once existed only as memory now breathes again.

In that sense, AI quietly debunks one of my favourite Ed Sheeran lyrics from Photograph:

“We keep this love in a photograph…
Where our eyes are never closin’,
Hearts are never broken,
And time’s forever frozen still.”

Time is no longer frozen.

What was once fixed is now fluid. What used to be a single captured second can now be re-animated, re-imagined, and re-experienced. AI doesn’t just preserve memory anymore — it interferes with it, enhances it, sometimes even rewrites how we relate to the past.

Back in 2004, photographs were evidence. They were static proof that this happened. Today, they are starting points. AI can make them move, smile, gesture, and almost speak. The line between memory and recreation is thinner than we ever imagined.

And just like the technology, I’ve changed too.

I was young, thin, and—looking back—clueless. Armed with theory, ambition, and certainty, but lacking the depth that only time and practice can give. The law then was slower, heavier, more manual. Research meant libraries, not prompts. Authority came from seniority, not algorithms.

Now, in 2025, AI assists, accelerates, and challenges the way we work and think. It drafts, predicts, and curates — but it also forces us to confront what cannot be automated: judgment, ethics, empathy, and experience. The profession has evolved, and so have I.

Watching that 2004 photograph move felt symbolic. Not because AI brought the past back to life, but because it reminded me that nothing truly stands still — not technology, not memory, and certainly not us.

Time was never frozen. We just didn’t have the tools to see it move.