The Red Hat Factory AI Policy

Summary: None of the visuals or texts you encounter in any of Red Hat Factory's media channels are generated with AI. We respect the craftsmanship and explorative creation of authoring, photography and videography. And we will keep doing so as tools develop.

On the nature of AI

AI is in reality too broad a term to be used in any sensible way. It encompasses in truth anything from using a calculator to generating images and text from thin air. As long as you are outsourcing your intelligence to another machine, it could be called AI.

The challenges of this new age of AI is the ability to create visuals and text out of thin air. Some companies choose to use this to automate content such as social media posts and ads, just to optimize for the maximum amount of sales.

The drawback is loss of trust and authenticity in a brand. None of which we are willing to lose for short term gains.

Where we draw the line

We've always used all kinds of tools we have on our hands. We use image generation for example remove a hair or a pine needle from a product photo. Why do it slowly when modern tooling can help us out. But we never mess with the main subject of a photo. What is important to us is that you can trust that what you see is real and it will look the same when you get it home. Our reviews here and on Trustpilot should testify that we've lived up to this goal.

We might use LLM's (text AI's) for research, in a similar way to how you would google synonyms when you're writing. Spell checking can be helpful, or even feed a text through an LLM to ask if we wrote any factual errors. But the danger is when you let the LLM invent things for you. We will guard the creative process.

Losing the creative process

A real photographer goes out in the wild in a creative mode, and comes home with things he didn't even imagine. We want to keep that magic in our brand. The hidden cost of using generated assets is that you lose the unexpected inspiration that might hit you while out there. But the even deeper cost is the loss of humanity. Do we really want a society where our job is to ask a machine to do stuff for us, or do we want to go out, see the world and meet people as we create.

The sanctity of writing text is that it is the only way I get to speak to you in this online world. And if I, or someone on the team is not there typing it, we have lost the connection. So we will keep writing and in the act make as human a brand as we can.