Who Is Accountable for a Brand's AI Product Photos

A common trait among those brands that produce the best AI-generated product images is that, before creating anything, they ask themselves three questions:

• what the generated images are meant to achieve
• what standard they must meet
• who will be held responsible if they don't meet the standard

The first two points are ones that people will know about, and we have already discussed in 'The Five Questions Brands Ask Before Running Gen AI Work' what a brand expects from an agency's Gen AI work. The third point is the one that Generative AI has quietly started to remove, and the one which most brands have not brought back into focus.

A Traditional Shoot Had Accountability Built In

In a traditional photo shoot, there was no need to assign responsibility since the photographer was responsible for the quality of the photographs, the creative director for making sure they met the brief, and the producer for keeping to the schedule; and when a photo set turned out to be off-brand everyone knew which person's responsibility it was.

There are no such roles associated with a Generative AI workflow. The marketer prepares a description, the platform provides a set of images, and the designer selects the least unacceptable one. Since no one directed the session and no one checked the outputs, the generic photos on the product page can be blamed on no one, so the platform becomes to blame.

The brand then says that Generative AI 'doesn't work', even though it was the wrong approach that never actually took place. We set out to explain this misdiagnosis in 'Why Gen AI Comes Back Off-Brand — and Platforms Won't Fix It'.

The Three Questions, and Who Answers Each

If you're the marketer or creative lead responsible for a brand's product photography, these are the questions to settle before the next session, answered by the creative brief:

• Which campaign will the generative AI images support?
• What emotion should the consumer feel?
• Which product features need to be visible?

The Generative Photographer is responsible for turning those answers into Generative Direction within the prompt.

The standard defines the lighting quality we use, the kind of skin and texture that is acceptable, and the kinds of defects that are rejected immediately; one person is responsible for auditing each output against that standard.

The decision on which photos can be approved for campaigns is made by the client, who is in charge of the final approval of Generative Curation by the Generative Photographer (or 'GP' for short) and any marketer, agency, or in-house group he's working with, but it's the GP that determines which shots will reach the product page.

Generative Direction Becomes the Capability

The situation is this: a platform subscription is simply a single line item within the overall budget for AI when using it for marketing and creative production.

However, it's the marketer's accountability that transforms that investment into a real capability. If the marketing team is in charge of the creative brief, then that same accountability must pass on to the person responsible for the Generative AI audit.

It also alters the meaning of 'quality' within the team; when there is no owner, quality is merely an opinion and each creative professional and designer has their own opinion; but when there is an owner, a process, and a workflow with roles identified, quality becomes the standard.

We examined the characteristics that distinguish the AI-generated product photos that consumers accept from those that they spot as fake in 'Why 29% of Consumers Still Spot AI Product Photos'.

To finish with a comparison, no company would arrange a shoot without someone responsible for the photographs. Although generative AI has made the shoot cheaper, it has not made responsibility optional; instead, it has passed the responsibility on to the person in charge of the generative session and its outputs — the Generative Photographer.

Download our free guide 'How To Escape Generative AI Slop' for the direction techniques an accountable session is built on: genphotography.com/asset/fakeslop