Review generated and edited images

Images carry legal and commercial risk that text does not: rights, likeness, and the implied promise that a picture shows something real. This is the check to run before a generated or edited image goes on a public page.

Look at it at full size

Every check below assumes you have opened the image at full size. Generated images are convincing as thumbnails and fall apart at 100%.

Technical defects

Generation and enhancement both produce characteristic artefacts:

• Hands, fingers and limbs — the classic failure, still common.
• Text — lettering in a generated image is usually misspelt or invented. If words are needed, add them yourself.
• Faces in the background — often distorted, even when the foreground face is fine.
• Repeated patterns — tiling in textures, fabrics, foliage and crowds.
• Physical impossibilities — reflections that do not match, shadows falling the wrong way, objects merging.
• Edges, after background removal — halos, chopped hair, severed thin objects.

Rights and likeness

Do not present a generated face as a real person. Not as a team member, not as a customer, not as a testimonial portrait. If a page implies the person is real, the image must be of a real person who consented.

Check for recognisable individuals. A generated image that closely resembles an identifiable person is a problem regardless of intent.

Check for trademarks and logos that drifted into the frame — on clothing, packaging, signage, vehicles.

Check for protected characters and designs, which appear especially readily with stylised presets.

Keep records of which images are generated. When someone asks in two years whether a photograph is real, you want an answer.

Honesty about products

This is where enhancement carries the most risk.

An enhanced product image must still show the product a customer will receive. Improving lighting, correcting white balance and cleaning up a background are presentation. Changing the colour, smoothing a texture, removing a seam or making an item look larger, newer or better finished than it is misrepresents the goods.

The test: if a customer put the delivered item next to your image, would they feel misled?

The same applies to premises, food, and anything a customer will experience in person.

Context and audience

• Does the image match the page's message, or is it generic filler?
• Does it represent your customers and staff honestly, rather than a stock ideal?
• Is the setting plausible for your market — right buildings, vehicles, signage, clothing?
• Would anyone in your audience find it inappropriate or tone-deaf?

That last question matters most for sensitive subjects: health, finance, bereavement, safety.

Accessibility

• Real alternative text, written for the image's purpose, not a description of its contents. See Write alternative text that helps.
• Decorative images have empty alt text.
• Sufficient contrast where text overlays the image.
• Any information the image carries also exists in text.

Technical fitness

• Right aspect ratio for the slot, so nothing important is cropped away.
• Appropriate resolution for the display size — not far above it.
• Reasonable file weight, checked on mobile.
• Transparency behaves correctly against light and dark backgrounds, if applicable.
• The image survives your optimisation pipeline without artefacts.

Specifically after a replacing run

If the run used Yes, update references and keep the original, both images remain available and supported references are updated. Check:

• the pages where the image appeared;
• builder layouts, sliders and theme options;
• attachment-ID selections and hardcoded theme source URLs, which are not rewritten;
• affected page or CDN caches if their output remains stale.

See Replace an image everywhere it appears.

Disclosure

Decide as a policy whether your site discloses that images are AI-generated, and apply it consistently. Some sectors and some marketplaces require it. Editorial and news contexts have their own standards.

Whatever you decide, never claim a generated image is a photograph of a real event, place, product or person.

A short pre-publication list

• [ ] Viewed at full size
• [ ] No artefacts in hands, text, faces or edges
• [ ] Nobody recognisable, no trademarks
• [ ] Honest about the product or place
• [ ] Alternative text written for purpose
• [ ] Correct ratio and sensible weight
• [ ] Recorded as generated
• [ ] Disclosure policy applied