The Ethics of AI Photography: A Studio Perspective

Whenever people talk about AI and creativity, the conversation usually goes to extremes pretty quickly, either it’s framed as the future of everything and the solution to every problem, or it’s described as the end of art and something that should never exist at all.

As someone who’s been a working photographer for about 15 years, I sit somewhere firmly in the middle of that.

I don’t think AI is magic, I don’t think it’s going to replace creativity, and I also don’t think it’s something you can use responsibly without actually thinking about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Because once you’re dealing with images, especially images used by real brands in the real world, ethics stops being theoretical and becomes very practical, very quickly.

It becomes about trust.

The first question I always ask: what is this image for?

This sounds obvious, but it’s probably the most important part of the whole conversation.

There’s a big difference between creating an experimental piece of digital art, a visual for social media, a brand campaign, or a product image that’s being used to sell something directly to customers, and the more “real world” the use, the more responsibility there is to make sure the image isn’t misleading or deceptive in any way.

When I create AI images for brands, I’m always asking myself whether this would feel dishonest if I were the customer, whether it misrepresents the product, the experience, or the company in any meaningful way, and whether it gives a false impression of something that doesn’t actually exist.

If the answer to any of those is yes, then it doesn’t get used.

Not because AI is inherently wrong, but because misleading imagery is bad practice regardless of how it’s created.

Is AI art “stealing”?

This is the question that comes up more than any other, and the honest answer is that it’s complicated.

AI models are trained on huge amounts of data, and a lot of that data comes from existing images, which raises completely valid concerns around copyright, consent, and artists’ work being used without permission or even awareness.

As someone who’s made a living from images for most of my adult life, I understand exactly why this makes people uncomfortable, and I’d feel strange about someone scraping my entire portfolio and training a system on it without asking me first.

That’s partly why I’m very careful about how I use AI in my own work.

I’m not trying to recreate specific artists’ styles, I’m not prompting “make this look like X photographer”, and I’m not using AI to copy existing campaigns or recognisable visual identities.

I’m using it to create new, original imagery for specific brands, based on their own products, their own brief, and their own creative direction.

For me, the idea should always come from the brand and the concept, not from the dataset.

Consent and real people

Another area where things get ethically complicated very quickly is people, especially when AI is used to generate realistic human faces or lifestyle scenes involving “models”.

Just because AI can create a believable person, doesn’t automatically mean it should.

I personally avoid using AI to create realistic identifiable people for commercial work unless it’s very clear what’s being generated and why, and I would never use someone’s real likeness without their explicit permission.

There’s a big difference between creating a conceptual lifestyle scene to communicate a mood, and inventing a fake human to represent a real brand, particularly when that image might be used in advertising or marketing.

Again, it comes back to trust and transparency.

If an image feels like it’s crossing into something misleading, uncomfortable, or ethically grey, then it’s probably not something I want to be using for a client.

Ownership and client work

Another question I get asked a lot is who actually owns AI-generated images, and whether that works differently to traditional photography.

From a practical point of view, my approach is very simple, if a client commissions work from me, they get the rights to use the final images for their business, just like they would with any other commercial photography or creative project.

I treat AI imagery exactly the same as I would any other creative output, it’s created for a specific client, for a specific purpose, under a clear agreement, and it isn’t resold or reused elsewhere.

I’m not generating generic AI stock to sell to multiple brands, I’m creating bespoke visuals for individual projects, which ethically feels very different to mass-producing content and putting it into circulation with no real context.

Why human skill still matters

One of the things that makes me most uncomfortable about the way AI is often discussed is how much human skill gets downplayed, as if creativity is now just a case of typing the right words into a box.

In reality, that’s exactly why so much AI imagery looks slightly wrong, even when it looks impressive at first glance.

Lighting doesn’t behave properly, shadows don’t match, reflections don’t make physical sense, product shapes subtly change, and everything starts to fall apart the moment you look at it with a photographer’s eye.

This is where I think responsibility really comes into the process, because if you’re using AI commercially, you should care whether the image is technically believable and visually accurate, not just whether it looks interesting.

I spend a lot of time fixing AI mistakes manually, using professional retouching techniques and real photography knowledge, not to make it look “better”, but to make sure it isn’t misleading or visually dishonest.

In my workflow, AI isn’t replacing skill, it’s only useful because that skill exists in the first place.

The honest version

I didn’t get into AI because I wanted to replace photographers, and I definitely didn’t get into it because I think technology should come before creativity.

I got into it because I’ve spent years working with small brands who simply couldn’t access good, creative imagery, not because they didn’t care about it, but because the cost and logistics made it unrealistic.

Used carelessly, AI can absolutely be unethical, lazy, or exploitative.

Used thoughtfully, it can be a genuinely powerful creative tool that gives small businesses access to visual storytelling they’ve never had before.

For me, the line is quite simple.

If an image feels deceptive, exploitative, or dishonest, I won’t use it.

If it helps a brand communicate clearly, creatively, and fairly, then I will.

And honestly, that’s not really an AI rule at all, it’s just a good photography rule.