Image and AI policy

Image provenance

An image is published only when its rights can be stated. For every image the Magazine records the source, the creator, the licence, a link to the original where one exists, the credit line, descriptive alternative text and the intrinsic dimensions. These are required fields: an article whose image is missing any of them does not build.

Dimensions are required for a second reason. Without them the browser cannot reserve space before the image loads, and the text a reader is part-way through moves under them.

What is not used

No images are taken from Pinterest, image aggregators, search results or any source whose rights cannot be established. “Widely reproduced” is not a licence.

Illustration versus evidence

Diagrams and illustrations are labelled as illustrations wherever they appear. A generated or drawn image is never presented as a photograph of the thing being described, and an image is never used as evidence for a claim the text does not support with a source.

The Magazine is designed to look finished without photography. Where there is no image with clean provenance, an article runs without one rather than with a stock photograph of a lorry that shows the reader nothing.

How AI is used

AI tools may be used for drafting assistance, structuring and editing. They are not used to generate facts, sources, citations, quotations, statistics or regulatory positions, and nothing reaches publication without a person checking each material claim against the source cited for it.

This matters specifically here. A language model asked about customs procedure or a transport regulation will produce a fluent, plausible, correctly formatted answer whether or not it is right, and will invent a regulation number as readily as it will recall one. In freight, acting on such an answer has customs, contractual and safety consequences, so the sourcing requirements in the sourcing policy apply to every factual claim regardless of how a draft was produced.