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.

AI's impact on art and trust

AI struggles with hands. 
Microsoft Co-Pilot April 2025

One of the biggest ironies of generating something with AI, whether it is a picture, writing, animation, etc. is that the work the AI generates is considered "original". The irony about this is that AI draws from the compendium of all human knowledge and creation; it could not write if a human had not written it. It cannot create a picture if a human did not already create it. AI needs human knowledge and creation to create it's "original" works. So what is AI's impact on artwork? A local family friend, who works as a graphic artist, called yesterday and said he can't find work. He's told he's over-qualified, or too old (they don't say that but a lot of employers do discriminate based on age. Why hire a qualified Gen-X when you can hire a Gen-Z for less?) and the end reason for it all is that AI is taking his work. Again, a Zoomer can do similar or close to what he did for less. And this graphic artist has had some of his artwork go nationwide on products you have seen; and now AI has dried up that work. I was telling another friend today about his plight and she replied, "I hate AI art! That's all there is on social media and I'm sick of it!"

I have a couple of predictions that will be good for our graphic artist friend and for all artists - I think that there will come a market saturation point where because AI art is so mass-produced and everywhere right now, that two things will happen (eventually): 1. Human created art will be in demand again 2. Human created art will go up in value. Hopefully, he can ride this out because think about all the fields this is impacting. Acting is an art and there is now an AI actress. How do human actors feel about competing with code for paychecks? Can an AI actor win an Oscar for Best Actor? Or would an AI win for Best Graphics? 

Something else to consider is trust. How can we know something wasn't created with AI? The AI detectors marketed to teachers can be faulty. A cousin wrote a college entrance essay and did not use AI at all and the AI detector said she did. When we began working on our photo recommendations for the Coalition of Responsible Use in Genealogy (CRAIGEN.org) I heard Steve Little say something that has stuck with me since, "It will be hard to trust online family tree photos added after November 2022." This is why CRAIGEN advocates for labeling images created with AI. Most people just starting out with AI do not realize that AI does not restore a photo, it regenerates a photo. And since AI is programmed to correct things, it does ever-so-slightly. AI might straighten out a bump in their nose, the lines of in their ears, upturn the corner of their mouth, straighten their tie, etc. Sometimes the changes are glaringly noticeable like changing the color of a coat and other times, you cannot detect any changes. Technically, it is not a photo of your ancestor it has generated, it is AI's interpretation. This is why it is so important to label AI generated photos.