How we use AI

Last updated: August 2026

We are two people running a small brand, and we use AI for some of the work. That is not something we want to hide in a footer. Here is what is made with AI, what is not, and how you can tell.

Photos

Most of the photos on this site are ours. The Galápagos sea lions, the night dives off the Jaya in Raja Ampat, the socks drying on a boat rail — we were there, we took those, and they are not touched up beyond the usual crop and colour.

Some images are not photos at all. When we write a guide about ear care or fogging masks and have nothing usable from our own trips, we generate an illustration instead. Those are always labelled“Illustration created with AI” directly under the image. If an image on an article carries no label, it is a real photograph.

The same goes for product mockups. Until our first production run is finished, some garment visuals are digital renders of our prints rather than photos of finished pieces. We label those too, because a render that looks like a photo of a product you can buy is exactly the kind of thing that should say what it is.

Words

Articles start as our own notes, our own dives, our own mistakes. AI helps us draft and tighten them. Every article is then read, corrected and approved by Caroline or Jonas before it goes live, and we cut anything that we have not actually experienced. If a piece claims we got seasick in the Red Sea, we got seasick in the Red Sea.

We do not publish anything on this site without a human reading it first. There is no automated posting.

Illustrations and prints

Our ocean prints are not AI. They were drawn by our illustrator Yuliia, by hand, and we pay her for that work. The story of how we found her is on the blog.

Why we bother

Since 2 August 2026, Article 50 of the EU AI Act requires photorealistic AI imagery to be disclosed. We label ours even in the cases where the rules are debatable. If you are reading a gear guide to decide what to put in your dive bag, you should know which pictures are real.

Questions about any of this: hello@soggylife.com.