The Art
Bridgetown Puzzles is committed to publishing authentic, human-created art. This means that no art produced in whole or part with AI, including generative AI, will be published by the Bridgetown Puzzles brand. Digital illustrations produced without the use of AI are allowed.
Generative AI is trained using existing art, produced by real artists. The result of a prompt to a generative AI model does not give credit or compensation to the work that the AI used as the basis for its response. While major AI companies have been sued dozens of times for copyright infringement, the practice of using existing art to train AI models continues.
Bridgetown Puzzles believes that art is a human expression. It is a reflection of the human experience and enriches our society. The use of AI in art not only removes the humanity from the work, but it takes an opportunity for paid work away from an artist. Investing in real artists allows us all to benefit as individuals and as a society from their continued work.
Most of the art that is published through Bridgetown Puzzles is a scan or high resolution photograph of a physical piece of art (think paint on canvas). In addition to the physical observation of the art, Bridgetown deeply vets artists, and all artists sign an agreement attesting to the fact that they have not used AI in the creation of their artwork.
Other Notes
Bridgetown Puzzles recognizes the staggering environmental impact of AI and is committed to avoiding the use of AI whenever possible. This includes not using AI to write copy for the website or produce content for ads or social media. This also means turning off AI options in ad, email, and analytics software whenever possible.
AI captions on videos may be used to improve accessibility when needed. There is no way to remove all AI from the software needed to run a business (such as algorithm-driven social media) as it is now baked into the majority of the services and software that we all use. But we are committed to choosing to avoid it when the option exists.
AI isn't going away anytime soon. We can't un-ring the bell. But we can choose human creativity, we can choose authenticity, and we can vote with our dollars for a richer lived experience and a well supported art community.