Artificial intelligence is everywhere now.
It is writing emails, generating images, helping people code, answering questions and even helping people decide what to have for dinner.
And honestly?
I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing.
I use AI almost every day. As a software tester, it has become another tool in my toolbox.
AI can genuinely improve the way we work
When I find a bug, AI can help me structure the report, tidy up my wording or create a template that I can copy and adjust.
Instead of spending ten minutes writing the same type of bug report again and again, I can spend more of that time actually testing the software.
That means I can test more areas, investigate issues properly and potentially find more bugs.
Developers also receive clearer information, which makes it easier for them to understand the problem and reproduce it.
To me, that is exactly what AI should be doing.
AI should remove repetitive work without replacing the judgement and critical thinking of the person using it.
The tester still needs to understand the system.
The tester still needs to reproduce the issue, understand the impact and decide whether the behaviour is actually a defect.
AI might help present that information more clearly, but it should not be making every decision.
But what happens when AI is used to sell us something?
This is where I start having a problem with it.
We have all seen adverts showing the perfect burger.
The bread looks fresh. The burger is huge. The cheese is perfectly melted. The chips look crispy and everything has been arranged under perfect lighting.
Then the actual food arrives and it looks nothing like the advert.
That is already frustrating, but what if the image in the advert was not even a photograph?
What if the burger never existed?
What if the chips never existed?
What if the entire image was generated by AI and was simply an imaginary version of the product designed to make you spend money?
At that point, is it still advertising, or is it a convincing piece of fiction?
This is really a question about trust
My issue is not simply that AI was involved.
It is that someone is being shown a product that may not be a true representation of what they are going to receive.
If I am buying software, I expect the screenshots to represent the actual software.
If I am looking at a hotel, I expect the photographs to show the rooms and facilities that actually exist.
If I am buying a car, I expect the images to show the real model, condition and features.
So why should food, medicine, cosmetics, furniture or other physical products be treated differently?
A photograph can obviously still be edited. Food photography has always involved careful lighting, presentation and styling.
But there is still a real product in front of the camera.
An entirely AI-generated image does not need to contain anything that has ever existed.
Not every use of AI should be treated the same
I am not suggesting that AI-generated images have no place.
They can be useful for:
- Brainstorming and early ideas
- Concept art
- Mock-ups and prototypes
- Internal presentations
- Creative projects
- Content that is clearly fictional or illustrative
None of that particularly bothers me.
But once somebody is being asked to spend money on a real, physical item, I think there should be a different standard.
Consumers should either be shown the real product or be clearly told that the image was generated by AI.
It should not be hidden in tiny writing or buried somewhere that nobody is going to notice.
It should be obvious before the customer makes a decision.
I created a petition about this
This issue matters enough to me that I created a petition calling for AI-generated adverts for physical products, such as food and medicine, to be banned or clearly disclosed.
The aim is not to stop AI from being used. It is to make sure people know when the product image they are looking at is real and when it has been generated.
View the petitionAI is a tool, not an excuse
AI is probably going to be one of the biggest technological changes we see in our lifetime.
I am excited about what it can do.
It can save time, improve productivity and help people do work that might previously have required specialist knowledge or expensive software.
But being excited about AI does not mean we have to accept every possible use of it.
We should still be able to question whether a particular use is honest, useful or fair.
In my work, AI helps me spend less time repeatedly formatting bug reports and more time investigating software.
In an advert for a takeaway, an AI-generated burger might simply create an unrealistic expectation that the real business cannot meet.
Those two uses are not the same, and they should not be treated as though they are.
Where would you draw the line?
Should businesses be allowed to advertise physical products using completely AI-generated images?
Would clear labelling be enough, or should these adverts be prohibited altogether?
AI itself is not always the problem.
Sometimes the problem is that we have become so focused on what AI can do that we have stopped asking whether it should.