As many of you are aware I have been delivering talks about AI and photography to L&CPU clubs since November 2022 so I am very aware that great confusion exists. AI is a rapidly evolving field and changes so quickly that even experts can struggle to keep up with every new development. In this article I aim to simplify and clarify what type of AI is and is not allowed in competitions at this point in time.
SO WHAT IS AI?
Here I have included the most useful terminology for photographers and reduced it down to 3 main categories for clarity:
- Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), also known as AI Assisted etc etc (see above), and is designed to perform specific tasks and cannot learn beyond its intended purpose. In photography, this used where existing image content is manipulated with the assistance of AI. Many of the processes in our digital software already are assisted by ANI and have been for years. The use of AI features contained within a post processing application are permitted in competitions providing they comply with a competition’s editing criteria and do not contain any elements which were not captured by the entrant. Therefore, any rule that does not allow generative AI, still allows this basic type; ANI
- Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is also known as Generative AI (more than 23 synonyms). AGI has human-like intelligence and can learn and mimic basic human thinking and generate original content. In photography; AI generation is where new content is imported into the image, so some or all of the pixels present have not been captured by the author. This usually involves being connected to the internet or downloading external content.
- Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) is only a theoretical future development and surpasses human intelligence and can perform any task better than humans. This is not yet relevant
The L&CPU rules: “10. Images constructed from or that include royalty/copyright free/AI generated images are not acceptable.” This is one of the most accurate and succinct AI in photography competitions rule within the UK.
TO SUMMARISE: If the image has been initiated by the author taking the photograph/s, then ANI processing is acceptable as long as it only uses AI to assist in improving or manipulating what has been captured. As has always been the case, the Director of Competitions may require an entrant to provide all supporting captures used in creating an image. At the time of writing it is often not possible to detect the use of AGI but, developers are actively working to create tools to do this easily and these are likely to come on the market in the near future.
Some further references:
Scottish Photographic Federation AI guidance
RPS guidelines on the use of AI
This is a complicated subject, but I hope that after reading this you will be able to use AI tools with greater discernment when preparing images for competitions.
Susie Freeman
January 2025