Let's be real (or maybe fake?). Can we seriously talk about the ethics of using AI images to promote your farm?

I understand asking AI tools—ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or whatever else is out there—to make amusing little additions to photos (like put a Santa hat on your own chicken for fun) because not everyone has the time, patience, or a small enough Santa hat to take a perfectly adorable photograph of their best bird.

I get it.

I get it.

I really do.

And they are SO cute wearing those Santa caps.

I also understand not many poultry farmers are blessed with a photography background, a decent digital SLR camera, and photoshop knowledge (like me) when I have the patience, time, and extra set of hands to take some actual pre-thought-out photos.  A good cell phone camera’s capabilities would put my 12-year-old digital SLR to shame anyway.

But when AI creates a bird that is nothing like your own breeding stock and looks like a magical dream of a bird (that is not transparently labeled as AI)  it just feels pretty damn rotten.

Not everyone has the keen eyesight to decipher AI from real photos all the time. It’s illusory. If you’re compelled to use AI marketing material, be clear (and fair) and label it as such.

Using AI to promote your own breeding stock and not labeling it is unethical. So PLEASE, if you’re out there having fun with AI making photos of a perfect black bird, don’t falsely advertise it as your own breeding stock.  It’s misleading, distasteful, and just feels downright wrong.

Don’t you agree?

These are some AI images my kid made to amuse me at the breakfast table this morning.