Aid agencies found to use AI-generated images in campaigns

AI-generated images of extreme poverty, children and sexual violence survivors are flooding stock photo sites and increasingly being used by leading health NGOs, according to global health professionals who have voiced concern over a new era of “poverty porn”.

- Aisha Down

“All over the place, people are using it,” said Noah Arnold, who works at Fairpicture, a Swiss-based organisation focused on promoting ethical imagery in global development. “Some are actively using AI imagery, and others, we know that they’re experimenting at least.”

Arsenii Alenichev, a researcher at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp studying the production of global health images, said: “The images replicate the visual grammar of poverty - children with empty plates, cracked earth, stereotypical visuals.”