AI Photography Manifesto: What Photographers Wrote

Is there an AI photography manifesto, written by photographers? We searched for one and found statements, open letters and pledges, but no founding text on the model of the early twentieth-century photographic manifestos. This article reads the real documents side by side, then adds a short imaginary manifesto that we wrote ourselves and label as such. We read each page on 10 November 2026. For the older tradition, see our post on photography manifestos.

A note on the earlier version of this page. It presented a manifesto as received from an anonymous source, and it could name no author. We cannot stand behind that framing, so we removed the text and replaced it with the research below.

AI-generated split portrait of a human eye and a circuit eye, an AI photography manifesto theme — AI-generated image, not a photograph. It splits a face between a human eye and a circuit-board eye.

AI Photography Manifesto: What We Found

The table lists the documents in date order. However, most are reactions to a specific event, such as a prize or a competition rule, not abstract declarations.

Date	Who	Form	Main demand
April 2023	Boris Eldagsen, photographer	Refusal of a Sony World Photography Awards prize	Keep AI images and photographs in separate competitions
August 2023	Getty Images, AP, AFP, EPA and the NPPA	Open letter	Training-data rules, consent, payment, labelling
November 2023	Daniel Etter and over 100 photographers	Open letter to World Press Photo	No generative AI in the Open Format category
2023	Writing With Light, joined by Magnum	Statement of principles	Disclose any departure from what the photographer witnessed
January 2024 (year inferred)	Alex Coghe, documentary photographer	Manifesto of the Unveilers	Reject fabrication; stay with the real world
October 2024	Ed Newton-Rex and signatories	Statement on AI training	No unlicensed use of creative works for training
November 2024	Magnum Board of Photographers	Message on AI	No synthetic images in the Magnum archive
June 2025	A. Cemal Ekin, photographer	AI Imagery Manifesto, written by ChatGPT	Call AI images AI imagery; credit and disclose
October 2026	Cilia and microscopy researchers	Open letter to Nikon	Release the original recording; set rules on AI in competitions

What the Documents Say

First, Eldagsen entered an image called The Electrician in the Sony World Photography Awards, won first prize in the Creative category, and then declined it. According to Euronews, he said he wanted to test whether competitions were ready for AI images, and he concluded they were not. Still, he argues that AI is not photography. At the same time, he describes his own process as co-creation, in which he directs the work through prompts, inpainting and outpainting, and he ran the images through generators 20 to 40 times.

Next, the agencies’ letter of 11 August 2023 asked for robust regulation: protection of copyright in training data, transparency about datasets, permission before use, payment and credit for creators, and clear labels on AI-generated content. In November 2023, Daniel Etter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, published a letter against the use of generative AI in World Press Photo’s Open Format category, and more than 100 photographers signed it, many of them former winners. As a result, the organisation reversed its decision and changed the rules to exclude AI-generated images.

Magnum and Writing With Light

Meanwhile, Magnum joined Writing With Light in 2023. As Magnum describes it, the group asks that journalistic photographs show what the photographer witnessed, rejects misleading alterations and staged scenes sold as spontaneous, and asks for disclosure of any departure through a caption, credit or icon. On 14 November 2024, the Magnum Board of Photographers added that its archive and distribution are reserved for images taken by humans, and that synthetic images will not enter the archive. However, the board says it respects its members’ creative freedom.

Oude Kerk in Amsterdam with World Press Photo banners during the 2013 exhibition — The Oude Kerk in Amsterdam during the World Press Photo exhibition, April 2013. Photo: Pejman Akbarzadeh / Persian Dutch Network, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

An AI Photography Manifesto From the Street

Similarly, Alex Coghe, an Italian documentary photographer based in Mexico City, wrote the Manifesto of the Unveilers. It is the closest thing we found to a classic manifesto. In short, street photographers, it says, reject manufactured narratives, treat the real world as their subject, and see any camera as a tool for truth. Moreover, it invites readers to sign by leaving their name in the comments. The page is signed 5 January, and the year is probably 2024 but not stated.

The Statement on AI Training is one sentence long. Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and former Stability AI executive, published it on 22 October 2024. Indeed, Hyperallergic reports that about 10,000 people signed at first and more than 25,000 by 24 October, among them the photographer Lynn Goldsmith. Finally, in October 2026, a group of cilia researchers and clinicians wrote to Nikon about a Small World in Motion winner that they suspect is largely AI-generated. They do not oppose AI in imaging. They separate tools such as denoising and reconstruction from generative AI that can invent structures no microscope recorded.

Three Demands That Recur

Name the medium. Eldagsen wants separate categories, Ekin wants the label AI imagery, and Writing With Light wants disclosure in the caption.
Protect evidence. Magnum, World Press Photo and the Nikon letter all try to keep generated images out of spaces that claim to record what happened.
Respect creators’ rights. The agencies’ letter and the Statement on AI Training ask for consent, credit and pay when AI companies train on creative work.

In addition, a PetaPixel article of January 2026 shows the debate over evidence. It answers a Washington Post opinion by the photographer Phillip Toledano, who argued that the photograph’s era as evidence has ended. However, NPPA general counsel Mickey Osterreicher replied that the answer is provenance, labelling and professional accountability. For the legal side of these questions, see our post on AI image copyright law.

The Missing AI Photography Manifesto on the Pro-AI Side

In short, we found no founding manifesto by a group of photographers who champion AI image-making. The nearest items are individual. For example, Eldagsen defends co-creation while insisting that the result is not photography. Toledano, according to PetaPixel, accepts that photographs no longer work as evidence. Ekin’s manifesto calls AI imagery a legitimate medium, but it asks for honest naming, and ChatGPT wrote it, not a movement.

In particular, Ekin’s case is worth noticing, because he published the text unedited and says so. As a result, the most visible AI photography manifesto of 2025 has no human author in the usual sense. Our search was limited, so a pro-AI group text may exist, and we would add it. For the range of positions, see our post on the AI photography debate.

AI-generated group holding phones with cosmic images, an AI photography manifesto illustration — AI-generated image, not a photograph. The people, hands and phone screens are invented.

Our Own Imaginary AI Photography Manifesto

Overall, the documents above are mostly defensive. Because no real text states a shared pro-AI position, we wrote a short one ourselves, built from the demands that recur. It is imaginary: no group wrote it, and nobody signed it.

We name what we make. A generated image is an AI image, and a photograph is a photograph.
We credit the person who directs the work and the system they use.
We keep generated images out of evidence, journalism and documentary archives unless the caption says otherwise.
We ask before we train on other people’s work, and we pay when we use it.
We judge each practice by its own aims, not by the rules of the other.
We accept that tools will keep changing, and we revise this text when they do.

AI-generated still life of a coffee cup and keys in sunlight — AI-generated image, not a photograph. The lettering on the keys is garbled, so it shows no real scene.

What We Removed From This Article

For context, the earlier version ran to about 20,000 characters. It declared a movement of anonymous artists, praised the machine as creator, and listed principles for democratisation, ethics, culture and practice. Moreover, it cited no source, and its authorship claim was unverifiable. We removed all of it, along with generic links to the Copyright Office, the International Center of Photography and the Met homepages.

Sources and Limits

First, we read these pages through a summarising fetch tool, not as raw pages. Second, we read reports of the Etter letter, the Eldagsen statement and the Statement on AI Training, not the originals, and we did not read the Writing With Light site or the Toledano op-ed. Third, we took the three Writing With Light principles from Magnum’s page. Also, signature counts date from October 2024, so we did not check current numbers.

Likewise, Coghe’s year comes from the signature date, not from a stated year. We found no pro-AI group manifesto, but our search was limited to English-language web sources. Finally, the closing manifesto is our own invention. In addition, one photograph here comes from Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0, and the other three images are AI-generated.