A wire service bars AI from photos, not from drafting text

The writer's problem

A wire-service photo editor deciding whether an AI tool may touch a news photograph faces a different question than a text editor deciding whether a reporter may use a chatbot for background research. The Associated Press addresses both, differently, in its standards around generative AI.

What the documents show

For photography, video and audio, AP's standard is close to absolute: we do not allow the use of generative AI to add or subtract any elements, consistent with a longstanding rule against altering any element of its visual journalism. The one labeled exception is narrow: an AI-generated illustration may run only if it is itself the subject of a news story and is clearly captioned as AI-generated. For text, the standard is looser but still bounded: AP states it holds a licensing agreement with OpenAI, permits staff to experiment with ChatGPT with caution, but does not use it to create publishable content, and treats any generative AI output as unvetted source material requiring ordinary sourcing and editorial judgment before publication. AP's page states this builds on its standing Statement of News Values and Principles, which centers accuracy, fairness and speed.

The editorial choice

Drawing the photography line as a near-total bar, while leaving the text line as a sourcing-and-verification standard, reflects an editorial judgment that a manipulated image can misrepresent reality in a way unedited text summaries typically cannot, at least not without a further human writing and fact-checking step in between. AP states this choice explicitly rather than leaving the two formats under one blanket AI policy.

What stays with the author

AP's page states the central role of gathering, evaluating and ordering facts remains with the journalist, not the tool, and that journalists are accountable for the accuracy and fairness of what AP publishes regardless of what tool assisted. The standard does not specify a technical method for verifying that incoming third-party photos or video were not altered by generative AI, asking only that journalists apply the same skepticism and reverse-image checks they already use for other kinds of manipulated content.

• Is this AI use touching a photograph, or drafting text that a human will still verify before publication?
• If it is an AI-generated image, is it clearly labeled as such in the caption, as AP's exception requires?
• Would AP's own standard, applied here, call the AI output source material or a finished, publishable product?

AP's split standard is a useful reminder that a single newsroom can draw the authorship line in more than one place, depending on what kind of content is at stake.