I definitely understand the concerns about AI, and we have a clearly stated AI policy on our website (it's in the about section).
If this assuages your concerns a bit, here's how this current use went down
a) I work occasionally with an illustrator on some other projects. She's good and usually quick
b) I had a vision of what I wanted the hero image for this article to be. We were on an incredibly tight deadline - we only started this project after a long and tearful Zoom call with me and my writers on Tuesday.
c) I couldn't communicate the full vision of the hero image to Aria, the illustrator. We had a friday publication deadline. So we met for coffee, and created some prompts in Gemini to produce images. One was the basis of this illustration.
d) Aria took the image and mainly used it as an underlay (not unlike a "paint by numbers" or "tracing" sketch starter piece. She went to work in Penup (her choice app).
e) she sent me two drafts; I sent notes back. (AI can never seem to do an espresso machine accurately, and Aria's not a coffee geek). She finalised it. It is her art, but with an assist on some background stuff and the overall layout and concept from AI.
f) she refused payment (she, like the writers of this article, did it for the purpose, not for income; all three of my writers refused payment for their contributions).
I am not opposed to AI as a tool or an assist. I am opposed to content created with AI. This is covered on our AI policy page. We use AI to apply our decades-developed Writing Style Guide (we have a specific Gem programmed for that) to all our content. I use it for initial research (fortunately, I almost always know more about the products we research in AI, so I can immediately spot when it's wrong). We use it to build specification tables, other mundane bits of research and tabulation that I have done myself for decades before and always hated.
And... in very few cases, we WILL use AI to generate images. This too is outlined in our AI policy page (TLDR: we will use it if we are boycotting something and do not want to spend money on props from that boycotted company).
CoffeeGeek
npub1ep…z29a5
2026-01-24 08:02:45 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…48x5
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