To edit or not to edit? Disclosure is the answer

Salt Palace 2026

In today's news, the prompter and motion capture provider of AI creation, Tilly Norwood, is receiving death threats. An interesting point the prompter makes is that "Tilly is famous. I'm not. That's wonderful. Fame is a horrible thing." Death threats definitely add credence to the "fame is a horrible thing" posit. Norwood's prompter also makes the point that since the AI is the famous one, she doesn't have to do things like Botox to preserve youthfulness. Altering one's appearance was a recent discussion I had with Ilya at The Family Vault (an AI Agent and cloud storage) booth at 2026 RootsTech. Ilya questioned why disclose using AI for photo regeneration when people edit photos with Photoshop or even that many women wear make-up and that's editing their looks? I've been mulling this over ever since RootsTech! In the Genealogy Community, it is actually an asset to be older. When I became active in genealogy at age 31, I actually had genealogists be dismissive towards me due to my youth. Some genealogists wear make-up and some don't; it's not a field where appearance is judged like it is with celebrities. I have noticed that make-up tends to help when on Zoom meetings or on stage because the bright lights tend to wash out facial features. Unlike with AI use, there's no need to disclose I'm wearing make-up because it's quite obvious and visible. Of course I didn't think of this at the time I was chatting with Ilya - the case for disclosure lies with whether editing can be detected or not. Make-up is visible. Tinting old photos is visible. AI photo regeneration is not visible (at least to the naked eye). Read more here on the Coalition for Responsible AI in Genealogy's "Protecting Trust in Historical Images" position statement.