Images cost nothing to produce now and arrive in unlimited numbers. The usual conclusion is that they have become disposable, and that being disposable, they can no longer be trusted. The facts in that description are right. The conclusion moves too fast, because trusting a photograph has always meant twoContinue Reading
For two hundred years, ever since Niépce left a pewter plate in a window for the better part of a day, a photograph was something you could interrogate yourself. You looked at it, and you decided. The light behaved, or it betrayed a seam. The shadows agreed with the room,Continue Reading
When a news image is modified via AI, everyone jumps in outrage, and it becomes an affair. If a picture of a (smiling) woman eating a fresh salad in her kitchen is AI-generated, no one really cares. In both cases, AI was used. Why is it that, in one case,Continue Reading
War compresses everything, including the truth. The moment the first missile lands, demand for images spikes, while the supply stays thin. Photographers can only be in so many places, and the most newsworthy places are the hardest and most dangerous to reach. Editors need pictures in minutes, not hours. InContinue Reading
Since every company in the world communicates with visuals, this act affects everyone Two months out from application, Article 50 of the EU AI Act is generating more anxiety than clarity in the teams that produce and publish visual content. The date to remember is August 2, 2026. Systems placedContinue Reading
The current crop of AI image-authenticity tools tends to do one thing. You upload a photograph, the tool returns a number. 73% likely AI-generated. 0.21 confidence of manipulation. The number is supposed to settle the question. It doesn’t, of course, because the number is a statistical probability that the imageContinue Reading
….. if they understood what they actually have For two decades, photo agencies have been selling pixels. The price of those pixels has been falling for almost as long, and generative AI has now removed the floor entirely. The conversation inside the industry has narrowed to a single question: howContinue Reading
The IPTC Media Provenance Summit held at Reuters in Toronto on April 16 drew 109 attendees from 67 organizations, including the BBC, Adobe, Sony, CBC/Radio-Canada, the European Broadcasting Union, the World Privacy Forum, Activo, Imatag, and PixelStream. What made this edition different from earlier gatherings was its tone. The debatesContinue Reading
Everyone in the visual content industry agrees, at least publicly, that authentic imagery should be worth more than AI-generated slop. Photographers say it. Agencies say it. Publishers say it. I’ve said it myself, many times, in this publication and elsewhere. Provenance matters. Trust matters. Reality matters. And yet, nothingContinue Reading
On March 10, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to demand a new licensing framework for AI training. Across the Atlantic, private data brokers are raising tens of millions to license content directly. Both approaches claim to solve the same problem. Neither does. The Axel Voss resolution passed with 460 votesContinue Reading