What happens when the decision-maker never actually sees your ad? “Looking great” is no longer a single thing. It used to be. A brand published a visual, a campaign image, a product shot, a banner ad, and the question was simple: Does this stop someone? Does it hold attention? DoesContinue Reading
For most of the last forty years, the answer was simple. Design resided in a department. It had a door, a head count, a queue, and a budget line. Marketing wrote a brief, the design team produced the asset, and the asset came back through a review cycle that everyone,Continue Reading
The year is 2046. There are now three kinds of photographs: those taken by light-based cameras, those generated or heavily modified by AI, and those carrying no provenance information at all, about which we can say nothing for sure. We have grown comfortable with the boundaries set by rules, regulations,Continue 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
Fifteen months ago, right here in Kaptur, I asked a simple question: who actually needs a video generation tool? Not movie makers. Not documentarians. Not the millions of people who already have one of the most powerful video-creation instruments ever invented: a phone in their pocket. My argument was straightforward:Continue Reading
The AI product imagery industry has a favorite word: efficiency. Every pitch deck, every tool landing page, every case study opens with the same promise: faster, cheaper, more. Photoroom will generate your lifestyle shots in seconds. Pebblely will give you 40 background variations before lunch. Adcreative.ai will instantly turn simpleContinue Reading
Eleven years ago, I coined a term. I called them the photo generation. The piece ran on Kaptur in April 2015, prompted by a Facebook study: 53% of US teens said Instagram helped define who they were, 63% used it to document their lives, and a third checked it beforeContinue Reading
India has implemented a new rule mandating media platforms to label AI-generated content and retain metadata, effective February 20. This regulation reflects a broader trend alongside similar policies in China and the EU, emphasizing the importance of metadata for compliance and authenticity. Platforms must adapt quickly to avoid penalties.Continue Reading
The promise is seductive: generate product photography in seconds, automate image editing at scale, produce marketing visuals without the overhead of traditional production. Generative AI tools for visual content have moved from experimental curiosity to operational necessity faster than most compliance frameworks can adapt. If your organizationContinue Reading