I wanted to touch base this afternoon to express my concerns over the story that arrived in my inbox this morning about Earth Day activities that contained an AI generated image. As a person who writes and shares my own photography in the pages of the RCP occasionally, it was quite upsetting to see an AI generated image shared without any clarification or attribution. I believe that doing so undermines RCP's credibility as a journalistic endeavor. In this age of constant misinformation and deep fakes we must be vigilant about sharing verified, or better yet real, images with news stories, no matter how important or unimportant they might seem.

Secondly, the irony of the fact that this image accompanied a story about Earth Day activities is just a little too rich for me. Generative AI is a massive energy and water vampire and has as yet unmeasured detrimental effects on the planet. The power of the tool is such that there are certainly uses that might justify such enormous energy and environment costs, but a cute picture in a local newspaper surely doesn't meet that bar. I know that as a contributor to the paper I've never been given guidance on the use of AI generated materials in my work. I'm wondering if RCP has an AI usage framework in place, if we don't, we absolutely should.

Jeff Woodward