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The Coming Great Digital Divide

 As the internet evolves into an AI agent repository database, filled with text, images, videos, and sounds specifically built to be used and consumed by AI systems, we can envision a segregated internet area solely reserved for real human beings, where access is predicated on proving one’s humanity through increasingly

Deepfakes as a trigger of a new economy

You used to prove your identity with a password. Now you need to prove you’re not synthetic. The alarm bells started ringing in Hong Kong when an employee transferred $25 million to fraudsters during what appeared to be a routine video conference with colleagues and the CFO. The twist? Everyone

Introducing the Authenticity & Content Provenance Maturity Model

When Content Trust Becomes a Strategic Asset There was a time when an image’s value was judged by its beauty, originality, or timeliness. Today, a growing portion of its value rests on something far more fundamental: whether we can believe it. From AI‑generated product shots slipping into online catalogs, to

August 2, 2025: The end of the AI wild west ?

As the EU AI Act’s obligations for general-purpose AI models take effect, the age of opaque training data and untraceable outputs is drawing to a close. The Shifting Sands of AI Regulation The era of unregulated AI development is coming to an end, at least in Europe. As generative AI

The Fashion Fiction We’re Willing to Buy

When MANGO launched its first fully AI-generated ad campaign last year, it made headlines: one of the first major fashion brands to swap models and sets for pixels and prompts. But now it’s gone a step further. This time, it’s not just campaign visuals or aspirational lookbooks. MANGO has begun

Photo by Vitaliy Shevchenko on Unsplash

The Line We Haven’t Drawn: What Makes an Image AI-Generated?

                 As generative AI continues to infiltrate everything from smartphone cameras to image editors, one deceptively simple question remains unresolved and increasingly urgent: How much AI involvement is enough to call something AI-generated? It is not just a technical question or a legal

The Hidden Economy Behind AI: Data Licensing Takes Center Stage

For years, we’ve been told that data is the new oil, and in the world of artificial intelligence, that metaphor feels almost understated. Every major AI breakthrough, from large language models to image synthesis engines, rests on vast amounts of labeled, real-world data. But unlike oil, data isn’t something you

The Content Authenticity Initiative 2025 Summit

Six years ago, a group of concerned publishers and a formidable creative software company, well-versed in the manipulation of digital content, joined forces to develop what may be the most important and underestimated standard of this generation. Ironically, this was before the rise of Generative AI. Since then, three summits

We See What We Have Learned to See

Perception, like clouds, is shaped more by the observer than the object. One person sees a horse galloping through the sky; another sees a face, a dragon, or nothing at all. The sky doesn’t change—the viewer does. And so it is with images. We do not see the world as

How weakening copyright helps fake news

Copyright is a Pillar of Provenance Copyright isn’t just a legal mechanism—it’s also a system of traceability. When a piece of content is protected by copyright: Its origin is clear (who created it, when, and under what rights). Its chain of custody can often be reconstructed (via licenses, credits, metadata,

10 questions to a founder: Proof Portal

More and more businesses are waking up to a critical risk: manipulated visual content can inflict lasting damage on brand reputation, customer trust, and ultimately, the bottom line. What was once primarily a concern for news organizations has now become a pressing issue for any company using images and video

The Silent Collapse: Generative AI’s Erosion of Photo Licensing Revenue

A Market on the Brink The proliferation of generative AI has ushered in a transformative era in visual content creation. Capable of producing photorealistic images from text prompts in seconds, tools like Midjourney, DALL·E, and Adobe Firefly are reshaping how businesses and individuals source images. By August 2024, 39.5% of

10 questions for a startup : Overlai

By now, we’ve all heard the stories: generative AI devours copyrighted content for breakfast. And while there’s been a lot of noise, little to nothing has been done about it. Photographers and videographers keep uploading their images online—easy pickings for scrapers—while lawmakers stand frozen, terrified that regulating too hard might

From Fast Fashion to Faster Photography: How AI is Accelerating Visual Content Creation

In the fast-paced world of online retail, visuals aren’t merely a factor—they’re decisive. As e-commerce continues to dominate consumer habits, the way products are photographed, edited, and displayed has become an urgent priority. But beneath the surface, a quiet revolution is underway. The recent Photoroom report, Clothing Photography and Photo

The Last Creative Spark: AI, the Blank Page, and the Loss of the Process

Creativity has long been considered a uniquely human trait. From art and music to literature and photography, our ability to generate something from nothing has been a defining characteristic. But there will come a time when an AI, housed in a body of metal and circuits, will dip a brush

All Photographs Are Possible—But How Do We Trust the Real Ones?

What if every photograph that could ever be taken already exists? Not in the sense that someone has already captured them, but in the sense that they are all possible, waiting to be revealed. How AI Generates Images: Deconstructing and Reassembling Reality Generative AI doesn’t “copy” images from its training

Why Film Photography Refuses to Die (and Why That Matters More Than You Think)

Just when we thought film was dead—buried under layers of pixels and algorithms—it comes roaring back to life. In a world where digital dominates, where perfection is manufactured in milliseconds, the imperfect, tangible, and deliberate nature of film is finding its way into the hands of a new generation. But

Article 17: Closing the Value gap – Where Are We Now?

The European Union’s Copyright Directive, specifically its contentious Article 17, was supposed to revolutionize the relationship between online platforms and rights holders. It was going to close the value gap and make social media platforms finally take down or pay for all the copyrighted content they were up to now,

The Shutterstock-Getty Images Merger: A Bold Move in a Shifting Landscape

The announcement of the Shutterstock-Getty Images merger landed like a crack of a whip in the stillness of the desert. With the New Year barely underway and much of the world’s attention focused on global politics, the news caught everyone by surprise—though not for long. The stock photo industry has

Who Needs a New Video Generation Tool?

No, seriously—how many of us have been genuinely frustrated because we couldn’t create videos from our desktop? Let’s be honest: if we take out everyone who makes videos for a living—movie makers, documentarians, trainers, influencers—that doesn’t leave a huge audience. Most people, during the vast majority of their lives, don’t

RSS Recent articles from the Bohemian

  • When Governments Lie With Pixels
    Earlier this month, the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) faced an internal revolt. Photographers objected to distributing official photographs of Sara Netanyahu that had been heavily retouched, some using AI, to make her appear younger. The manipulations were so extensive that veteran political journalist Shabi Gatenio, who broke the story in The Seventh Eye, warned […]
  • Tearing down our icons
    Let’s face it, iconic images bother us. They stand as an immovable beacon of our time, outside of it, impelling us at every sight, forcing us to admit their status as greater than any other. Because they are a statement about our world, about us, about who we are as a society, good or bad. […]

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