14/10/2026
Dear friends
Please read. Please share 🙏
We’ve seen posts from a number of photographers who have shared honestly about their struggles regarding AI usage and copyright theft (aka watermark removal). We hope you have too. And we now would like to add our voices to that movement.
First we would like to sincerely thank, from the bottom of our hearts, those parents who are doing the right thing, who support our small business and tell us how much they value the service we provide. It makes our week when we hear that you love our work. You are legends - and we're very happy to say you’re the majority! ❤️
Now then,
Perhaps naively we weren't overly worried about AI until recently. We always thought that AI can't really take over the arts - not within our lifetime anyway - and we didn't see it as a major threat to our business. Our thinking was that we can spot an AI generated image a mile off, it just looks wrong and how can everyone else not see it?
However.
We are now seeing AI being used regularly in homes as well businesses. Recently there has been some press (This Morning, BBC) about how easy it is, apparently, to remove watermarks from screenshots taken from online proof galleries. The skills and systems we have worked on for years to create quality portraits for parents, easy ordering, reduced paper waste and high volumes of photos is now a weakness.
We are more than exposed to loss of earnings - this has already happened. Over the last two years we put a sharp decline in sales down to the cost of living crisis. But now we are reviewing that massive drop in income with more suspicion.
But more importantly, families are being exposed to a different kind of threat, one that remains unknown and intangible for now, but experts are warning is certainly real and serious.
We have no idea what dangers lurk in sending a child’s image into AI software. The legitimate tech companies have not proven any ethical credentials with their actions in recent years, so we think we have to remain pessimistic on this. The concern is that images "fed into Ai" could then be widely available and manipulated. The national crime agency has reported on this recently : https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/news/new-guidance-for-parents-and-carers-as-ai-manipulated-images-of-children-become-a-growing-concern
At Playground Portraits we can't do more at this time than apply a more robust watermark to our individual and sibling portrait galleries - it looks absolutely horrendous and we hate it, but here we are. However we will be amending the way we deliver class photos in the spring and summer term. We see that as most serious in all of this. Because a parent who is doing their best to protect their child's privacy wouldn't even KNOW that the image is being fed into AI by a different parent in the same class.
That's it from us. We will try to get back on here a bit less sporadically, we know we've neglected facebook and instagram which isn't bad actually. But as with most things (including some forms of AI), there is a really good side to social media too, and we don't want to be forgetting that.
Oh and this collage - that's us hard at work in one of our lovely schools where the children, the staff and the parents always make us happy to do what we do 🩷
Peace ✌️
Aurelie and Ellie 📷
