Standards.
What we take on, what we decline, and how the imagery actually gets made. Written down so nobody has to ask.
Most studios don't publish a document like this, which is most of the reason to publish one. We produce AI-directed imagery for food, beverage, and hospitality brands. That makes questions about method, accuracy, and consent part of the work rather than a footnote to it. These are the lines. They apply to every engagement, and they don't move for a large enough number.
Work we decline
We do not take on projects for, or produce imagery in service of:
- Defense contractors, weapons manufacturers, and military branches
- State security, intelligence, and policing agencies
- Surveillance, biometric identification, and predictive policing products
- Prisons, detention facilities, and immigration enforcement
- New fossil fuel extraction
- Anything built to deceive: fabricated reviews, invented testimonials, synthetic people presented as real customers, or the likeness of a real person used without consent
This is a standing policy, not a response to a news cycle. If a brief falls into one of these categories, we will say so in the first email rather than the last one.
Disclosure
Every client knows exactly how their imagery is produced, in writing, before work begins. We do not obscure the method, and we do not charge a premium for pretending a camera was involved.
Where the EU AI Act's Article 50 applies, which is any content reaching an EU audience as of August 2, 2026, we label. Where it doesn't apply, we will still hand you the language if you want to use it. We never present generated imagery as documentary photography of a real place, event, or person.
Accuracy
Packaging, labels, ingredient lists, and fine print are checked against the real product before anything ships. We do not generate certifications, awards, medals, or nutritional claims that don't exist. We do not build a farm, a facility, or a team that isn't yours and let it read as though it is.
If an image implies a factual claim about your product, the claim has to be true. That check is ours to run, not yours to catch.
Likeness and consent
No identifiable real person appears in our work without written consent. Talent for lifestyle and hospitality work is either cast and paid at agreed rates, or entirely synthetic and disclosed as such to the client. We do not generate a person built to resemble a specific real one, living or dead.
People get paid
Direction doesn't remove the humans from this chain. Where a camera is the right tool, we shoot it or hire a photographer, at a real day rate either way. Freelance producers work under contract with defined rates, IP terms, and credit. No spec work, no unpaid tests, no exposure.
Infrastructure, honestly
The models we use run on cloud infrastructure owned by a small number of very large companies. We are not going to claim a clean supply chain, because no one producing digital work today has one, and the studios advertising otherwise are describing their vendors rather than their vendors' vendors.
What we will do is keep a record of which tools produced which imagery, and give you a straight answer the same day you ask for it. If your procurement team needs that documented, it already is.
Ownership
You own your imagery outright on final payment, including commercial and print rights, in perpetuity. Layered source files and the production record come with it. Nothing produced for one client is reused in another client's work, ever.
A standard you only follow when it costs nothing is a preference.
Questions
If something here rules out work you were hoping to bring us, tell us anyway. It's a better conversation than the one that happens three weeks in. If something here should be stricter, say that too. This document gets revised when the argument is good.
The reasoning behind this page is written up separately, in The machine has an owner.