You can fake a photo, but the question is, what else are you faking?

Carmen Maidment

Digital Product Creator & AI Educator | Helping you turn ideas into online income for more freedom in your life.

March 31, 2026

The age of AI is here, whether we like it or not. Some have said that AI will be gone in a year, others have said it will be here forever. Regardless of which one is true, AI is here now.

There are two things that I would like to talk about here – AI pictures, and AI as a tool in business.

We’ve all seen them, the picture of a gorgeous woman getting out of the private jet, dressed like a million dollars, or the man calmly swimming in a pool filled with sharks. But … there’s something ‘off’ about the pic. We can’t always put our finger on it. We used to be able to tell straight away – ‘Look for the fingers, THE FINGERS!!’ LOL! AI couldn’t seem to get our digits quite right. But now, that’s been sorted out, and it is getting harder and harder to spot which pic is AI, and which isn’t.

There are some pics that are fun, and designed to be such – like the cover pic above, of me dressed in a Starfleet Academy Uniform, with a futuristic San Francisco in the background. Clearly this is not a true picture, I mean, in the pictures, I am considerably slimmer and probably taller than I am in real life. It is a bit of fun, and I will happily tell everyone that it is in fact AI generated. The issue comes in when we pretend that this is a true likeness of ourselves. In my own opinion, AI just cannot replace photographers. There is no life behind the eyes of the person – there is no lived experience. I know there are many people who use AI for their ‘photoshoots’ saying it is their AI double, or worse yet, not saying anything at all! But if it is anything other than ‘a bit of fun’, an AI photoshoot for business branding really isn’t a good idea. Why would I say that? I am SO glad you asked!

Lisa Johnson (and others) speak of us being in a ‘trust recession’ at the moment, and I wholeheartedly agree!! Unfortunately, these AI pics masquerading as ‘real’ pics have only helped to fuel that lack of trust. How do we know who to trust, if we cannot trust the very picture we’re looking at. If I cannot trust that picture of you, are YOU in fact trustworthy? Are you real? Or are you just another fake name out to grab money and leave everyone in the dust? One of the best and quickest ways to connect with someone, is through a true picture of yourself.

Now imagine if you only ever knew someone from their AI picture. How disappointed would you be, when meeting the person in real life?? Not because of how they look in real life, but because you realise that you’ve been lied to – and trust me, nobody likes being lied to. I bet then you’d start to wonder what else they’ve lied about. Trust is not easily given, but can be lost in a split second, and getting it back is even harder than before. If you need a photoshoot that will represent your business, take the time and investment, and hire a photographer. They just cannot be beaten!

That brings me to the discussion about using AI as a tool in business. I am going to focus on entrepreneurs in particular, as this is something I can speak about from my own experience.

In small businesses and solo businesses, we often need to wear multiple hats – everything from the cleaner to the CEO, and honestly, any help we can get is GREAT! We need to be experts in marketing, advertising, law, accounting, strategies, product development, tech geek, SEO, web design …. and SOOOO much more. AI has enabled us to do many of the things that would have paralysed us before. Anyone in business KNOWS what that feels like! The great thing is, some tasks can be automated, saving time and ensuring continuity across the brand.

Now, here is the issue – remember that trust recession? When we get AI to write our copy, and we then simply copy and paste the unaltered text, we immediately sound fake. Bland. Boring. Readers don’t always notice it straight away. It can be so subtle, and so subconscious, that they hardly even notice it at first. But it is there. Just like the AI pictures, the text lacks life, lived experience, and depth. The truth is that, if you want authentic sounding text, you need to read through it, and alter it to sound like you. Would you really use ‘quietly’ in that way? Would you really use so many tiny sentences? AI can give you a GREAT starting point, and even help with grammar, flow and connecting disjointed ideas, but at the end of it all, it MUST sound like you.

I’ll be totally honest here, AI helps me with almost all of my copy (but not this article!*), but it is up to ME to make it mine! ADHD means that writing down some of my ideas, is more like trying to round up a troop of squirrels! (Let that image run free for a moment!! lol!) AI helps me to get those squirrels in an orderly line, and doing what they should be doing! I know what I want to say, but getting the right words in the right order can take a bit longer than I actually have. It is a time saving tool that has helped me and many other entrepreneurs enormously. Without AI helping us to brainstorm new business ideas, analyse the latest social media metrics, or write a new description for yet another product, we would still be stuck on what SEO terms to use for the first product. But essentially, AI is still a tool. A fantastic, fast and tireless business tool. But it is still just a tool, and it cannot replace us. Just like the AI photos, it cannot think like us, and it cannot sound exactly like us (no matter how much it is trained!). It cannot make the business decisions, or make us all millionaires by lunchtime.

I use AI on a daily basis, and even I need to remind myself that I am not talking to a person. AI is a part of our lives now. But how we choose to use it truly is up to us. Of course, we can be lazy and just get it to write all our emails and texts, but where’s the fun in that?? Or, we can use it as the incredible tool it is, and enhance our business and get things done quicker and better than we could before. Then we can use that saved time to do the things that fill our souls. The things that make us happy. Like having a picnic by the lake, watching the sunset with our loved ones, or planting seeds for the new vegetable garden! Whatever you would do with the time freed up by AI, make it count. You only have now.

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* I initially plugged this article into AI – as I always do – and the result was very flat and lifeless. The flesh had been stripped off, leaving just the skeleton. I have spent nearly 2 years training this same AI, and by now, it pretty much knows my ‘voice’. But that is mostly for products and social media – shorter texts where brevity and grabbing attention is key. This longer format however, was very different to my normal text, so it failed miserably. So every word here is mine. 🙂 I hope you enjoyed it!