As generative AI becomes ever more prevalent in our daily lives, I want to communicate about my use of AI for The Market Report and related projects, websites, and writing. Here are my general AI principles:
- I don't use AI of any form to write blog posts. Never have, never will. End of story.
- I don't use AI to generate or modify images -- with some exceptions. The vast majority of the photos on this website are presented as taken, with minimal editing (such as the occasional cropping, rotating, lighting/color adjustment, etc). It goes without saying that all images on this website are real, original photographs, and are not AI generated.
- The only rare exception is AI editing tools, such as those built into Photoshop or Google Images, to remove people from images in certain situations. At times, there are people included in my pictures who are distracting or who have asked to be removed from an image. In that case, generative AI may be used to remove a person from a picture. This is extremely rare, and (at the time of writing) I've done this exactly twice. Neither picture has been posted yet. When and if they are, I will clearly identify which pictures have been modified with AI.
- I will never use generative AI to create a picture showing something that isn't there. With the rare exceptions noted above, you can be confident that everything shown in all of my pictures actually happened.
- I don't use AI to research. It's simply too unreliable, at least so far.
- I can't be responsible if an AI search engine or chatbot misuses my materials. I've seen ChatGPT and other AI searches that actually pull content from The Market Report. Mostly, they correctly cite the website. But always double-check everything.
- I might use AI to help in writing social media posts. I have used generative AI tools to draft and edit posts for my Instagram and Facebook pages. In each case, the role of the AI is strictly to optimize what I've already written, and I proofread everything.
As always, with any questions or concerns, please reach out. I'm happy to elaborate or answer any questions.