How about this? Tennessee Tourism is adding a ‘Real Seal’ to its photographs so you’ll know they’re the real deal, not AI.

As reported here, Tennessee Department of Tourist Development (TDTD) and advertising agency VML have launched what they tout to be the industry-first photo certification campaign and pledge to not use generative AI in place of its own marketing photography.

A new survey commissioned by TDTD found only 5% of travelers can correctly identify real destination photos in a side-by-side test with AI-generated images. As AI-generated imagery grows more common and more realistic – news flash, it’s pretty darn common and realistic already – TDTD wants travelers to know its photos are the real thing.

So, TDTD and VML have launched an industry-first photo certification campaign called the ‘Real Seal’ – to identify photos that are the “real deal” (see what I did there?) and they pledged to not use GenAI in place of their own marketing photography.

One particularly nice thing about the program is that the new photo certification from Tennessee Tourism helps travelers verify where photos were captured, down to the latitude and longitude – something that metadata geeks like me can appreciate. 😊

When the chief creative officer of VML shared an image with her team that she thought was real (only to find out that it wasn’t), that incident spawned the idea behind the ‘Real Seal’. You can learn more about the program at TennesseeRealSeal.com.

BTW, the image above illustrates the Real Seal – it is a picture of Lost Creek Falls taken by Jared Kreiss and available on the Tennessee Real Seal site.

So, what do you think? Will other organizations adopt a “real seal” to shut out AI? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image Copyright © Tennessee Department of Tourist Development

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