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Overwriting images with "substantially different" versions
Does the Wikimedia Commons guideline COM:OVERWRITE also apply to images uploaded to the Wikipedia site?
WP:OVERWRITE is a soft offsite redirect to it, but I don't know if that's meant to be taken as an endorsement that it's also an official guideline here, or if it's only intended for quick reference to a Commons-only stance. Belbury (talk) 19:27, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. That WP:BOLD advice doesn't seem strong enough for me to revert the uploads to previous versions. (I'm looking at subtler cases where the uploader has gone back and replaced some of their earlier uploads with AI upscaled versions; it's against MOS:AIUPSCALE to use these in articles, but not clearly against WP guidelines to host the files on Wikipedia.)
As the creator we understand you like them but I'm looking for a policy base argument either way. Are these recreations of actual images ?Moxy🍁12:44, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are based off of several images, as I did not have the person sitting in front of me for a portrait, but they are my own creation, not a direct recreation of an image. JoeBugMan (talk) 12:56, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are being removed by multiple editors because of concerns that their AI generated and or user created resulting in a Caricature type image. I think they are great just a very odd addition to Wikipedia to have cartoon type images in place of real images. Must understand this has nothing to do with your artistic ability but related to the representation of real individuals. Moxy🍁13:15, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At least one of these images is a direct derivative of a copyrighted image (see discussion on Commons). I haven't had time to examine more, and the derivative status is a Commons consideration, not an en-wiki consideration, but I wanted to place on the record here that the statement based off of several images is not true for all these creations. Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:04, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The challenge is that you told us above that they weren't copies of individual images. I found one that was. Now editors on Commons will not be able to trust your assertion that this material isn't copyright-infringing. Can you see how that makes things more time-consuming for the volunteers here and why that might make people skeptical of using these images? I seem to be one of the only people who was open to the use of these kinds of images and now I am no longer supportive considering the problems of potential copyright infringement here in addition to the BLPIMAGE issues discussed below. Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:11, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm willing to remove any images if people make a case that they are too close to existing photos, but I stand by my assertion that they are not derivative work and that up until placing them in the public domain, I held the copyright. JoeBugMan (talk) 14:15, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Outside the wider discussion issue of using digital drawings, it's clear this individual is effectively drawing people from previously published photos and videos and presenting themselves as the copyright holder which likely isn't acceptable under copyright grounds. Rambling Rambler (talk) 20:26, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Moxy: They are being removed by multiple editors because of concerns that their AI generated and or user created resulting in a Caricature type image. I think they are great just a very odd addition to Wikipedia to have cartoon type images in place of real images. Must understand this is has nothing to do with your artistic ability but related to the representation of real individuals. Moxy🍁 13:12, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Me (joebugman): First of all, they are not ai generated, as I have stated multiple times and I am willing to prove it. Second, they are not caricature type images by any definition, they are illustrations of the people. Third, they are not "in place" of a real image- no image (copyright free, that is) exists of these people, so I specifically created them and placed them in the public domain so that there would be an image that could be used without conflict.
I'm glad you like them, I want people to like them and I want people to know what these individuals look like without having to leave wikipedia and google them to find out if it's the person they were thinking of (as I have often been forced to do when browsing wikipedia, a favorite past time of mine)
Maybe this undertaking of mine was a bad idea, I just wanted to contribute in my own way, but it seems like people don't think it's appropriate. I never wanted to upset anyone, I just thought it would be good add an image where none existed and to correct anyone who thought I had generated them with AI- something I Definitely did not do and do not want people to think of me. JoeBugMan (talk) 13:33, 29 August 2025 (UTC) JoeBugMan (talk) 13:43, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, and I saw you targeted my additions for removal, even removing images from non-BLP- do you haver a justification for that or do you just like going on a power trip? JoeBugMan (talk) 13:25, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They're not ai generated- they are made by me, a real artist, and I can prove I drew them if anyone is interested. Do you have any other reason for objection? JoeBugMan (talk) 13:32, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes we do I stated above.... that is concerned about the representation of real individuals with a caricature. Moxy🍁13:40, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Accepting in good faith the image creator's statement that they are not AI-generated, I don't have a general objection to user-generated digital illustrations in any of these BLPs. However, several of these creations ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5]) are quite unflattering and in the case of living people might be considered to WP:BLPIMAGE's prohibition on the use of images out of context to present a person in a false or disparaging light. I also think the background colors are quite jarring and that the images would fit in better to the pages if the background colors were more neutral. That said, @JoeBugMan, you are not doing yourself any favors by re-inserting these images after multiplewarnings about the WP:BRD cycle and accusing others of going on a power trip. Dclemens1971 (talk) 13:38, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the images being unflattering (which is a subjective opinion) is valid reason for removal of a picture- multiple pages of BLPs use photos that are unflattering (e.g. candid shot from a press junket), but they are not targeted for removal. Additionally, there are multiple biography pages that use an illustration, even though they lived in a time when cameras were prevalent,- should these also be taken down? Concerning the subjects not finding them flattering- If any of the people I have depicted do not like my drawings, I have no issue with them taking them down, I only request that they give me a chance to edit/redraw the image to their liking.
As for not doing myself favors, I stand by my accusation of ScottishFinnishRadish- he undid ALL the image additions I made on the grounds that they weren't fit for BLPs and he did this even on biographies of deceased people- Which seems underhanded to me, if not a direct violation.
With that said, I only wanted to contribute in a way that fit my abilities- I did not think this would cause so many problems. If the general consensus here is that I am not welcome then I will leave, no hard feelings. JoeBugMan (talk) 14:02, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Right, but an unflattering photo is still a photo that we can be confident is a real image of the person. We can't have confidence that an unflattering drawing is sufficiently accurate for encyclopedic use (and we are not generally supposed to use unflattering images for BLPs, period). Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:07, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone else has a better memory than me, I have a memory of a previous RfC which found consensus against original artistic portraits but can't remember the name and can't find it off-hand. I do recall it covered both living and historical figures. CMD (talk) 13:48, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for having a second look. I vaguely recall there may have been some initiative to draw pictures of historical figures that don't have one, and a West African monarch was either part of those drawings or an example used in the discussion. CMD (talk) 15:10, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The two key things to consider is 1) are any of the images too close to an existing, copyrighted photo of the person? If so, even with small artistic flairs, that would make them derivative works and no longer free images. and 2) if they are considered reasonably fair images of the people in question. In this case, while most seem reasonable, the first and fifth to me seem unflattering, but that's my personal opinion; editors on the respective pages should make that decision if the derivative work question is answered. Masem (t) 13:54, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If there is anyone who objects to the look of my drawings (quality level, closeness to the subject, etc.) please let me know- I am willing to rework drawings to get them to a better level JoeBugMan (talk) 14:04, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm guessing partially based on the unflattering expressions that the key source for most of these portraits is still frames from video. Like Masem says without seeing the original copyrighted works these were based on it's hard to determine if they're too derivative. But beyond that, the question is "are any of these images good?" and I'd generally say no. I certainly wouldn't want them representing me versus no photo at all if it were my biography. There's always a question of when it's better to have a bad free image than no image at all (witness the debates about terrible blurry screenshots of people from a distance or at events and whether or not that's worth adding) but to me these just don't meet the threshold here. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchstalk15:20, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If that's the consensus, that these images look bad and it would be better to have no image at all, then fine, I will stop making images JoeBugMan (talk) 15:27, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
derivative work from copyrighted images aside, it’s also opening a Pandora’s box of whether the artist is using Wikipedia to do promotional of their art and art style.
I recall a previous discussion but don't remember it forming any consensus. We have lots of awful photos, for example, many taken by Wikipedians or Commoners. Bluethricecreamman, do we complain when photographers donate their photos to Commons and do no editing/writing beyond adding their photos to articles? Are they also WP:NOTHERE?
I don't think Samuel JohnsonSamuel Johnson Samuel Johnson's lead image (top) is at all flattering, is quite blurry and makes him look jaundiced. The second here, shows Johnson's poor eyesight and apparently he hated it. But they are what we have, and nobody is saying they'd rather have no image than an unflattering blurry one.
We do seem to invent rules for Wikipedian-created-images that we don't apply to professionally created or other third party works, or to photos. Which to me seems odd for a project that exists for complete amateurs to write entire articles of their own dreadful prose. Most medical articles make one want to stick pins in ones eyes than read beyond the lead but we don't react to that by saying that we'd rather have no article on Tirzepatide than one so badly assembled?
Issues of copyright and whether the image is representative are important for all works, and issues with derivative works are unique to images created from others. But otherwise, could people please first think, would I be making this complaint about a historical work like Johnson's, or accusing a photographer of being here for their own ego rather than helping build the encyclopaedia with images too.
WP:BITE anyone? Accusing an editor of "bludgeoning the discussion" when the discussion is entirely about their own creations that hostile editors want to wipe from the project and 100% remove all their contributions is unfair and I think deserves an apology. Do you think if someone said that e.g. Bluethricecreamman's prose (I'm making this up) is so awful that we must remove all their edits from the project, then Bluethricecreamman might participate at an elevated level in that discussion?
There are lots of photographers on Commons who turn up at Wikipedia only for their own art, not for writing prose. They want their photos in the leads and showing up on google searches and even go as far as inserting their names into the filename. And yet I would guess this is the first time you have suggested that someone contributing images they made themselves to the encyclopaedia, and admitting to not wishing to be involved in the prose part of that, is WP:NOTHERE. I can think of several photographers for whom ego (in the form of little gold stars) is the entire driving force behind their contributions, and yet AFAIK, we do not have a "Delete per WP:EGO" policy when it comes to photography. Or SVG diagrams. But go freehand, or draw or paint a picture of a person, and suddenly "rules are invented": "Written prose can be iterated on communally. A piece of art cannot."
Photographs, diagrams and videos can also not be iterated on communally. We have no image format that permits this. I wrote about the problem of long-form-article-replacement videos at WP:NOTYOUTUBE. So I'm aware they are not collaboratively edited. But Wikipedia regards images as part of the encyclopaedia and our project would be worse without them. We accept that images are not collaboratively edited. We accept that photographers are often here only to insert their own art. Why invent rules when someone paints a picture of a person and that someone isn't Joshua Reynolds? Aren't we supposed to comment on the content, not the contributor? If this contributor is willing to revise their work, or change the style, etc, how could you "nurture" them (per WP:BITE) to produce material that is good?
Instead, this conversation is a textbook case of WP:BITE: "Treat newcomers with kindness and patience—nothing scares valuable contributors away faster than hostility." I do despair when people complain about "bludgeoning the discussion" when the accused literally is the topic of discussion. That's not the point of that essay. And the phrase "bludgeoning the discussion" is Wikipedia jargon, and battlefield imagery, so you've accused a newbie of a violent crime they don't even understand. -- Colin°Talk17:48, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My initial intent was not to promote my own work, but, if I am being honest, I may have started to treat it that way, which I can understand people objecting to.
I want everyone to know that this was not my initial intent, I just wanted to add cool images, but in the course of doing this I have probably let my emotions get the better of me, and in trying to defend myself (particularly in regards to assertions that my work is ai) I may have treated the pages of the people as, for lack of a better term, my "property"- which I admit is wrong.
Going forward, I have decided to refrain from making image edits to wikipedia and instead my participation will be limited to adding content to wikimedia commons, and other users are free to use my images as they wish.
I hope this resolves the issue for all involved- I never meant to cause harm and I hold no ill will towards anyone here that doesn't approve of me.
I would encourage you to, when you upload a new image on commons for someone who doesn't have an image on their page, at least drop a note on the talk page saying that the image is available, so that the folks who edit the article can have a reasonable chance of considering whether to add it. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 21:51, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would also suggest including an explicit link to any source material you used for the images, so that we can make a clearer determination of whether they are close enough to the sources to be a copyvio, as Commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:LeonPayne.png appears to be, rather than making other editors do the work of tracking down the same sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:10, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Afaik, Wikipedians have only written some guidance on AI-BLP pics, so "hand-made" BLP-pics isn't covered by that atm. IMO, they generally go against the spirit of WP:BLP (Be very firm about the use of high-quality, reliable sources) and WP:OR (this is the artistic vision of the netizen who made them, and btw, why is that vision WP:DUE?), so my knee-jerk reaction is "no".
That said, there is some precedence on WMF projects regarding pics like JoeBugMan's of dead people (maybe living too, I haven't checked), one example is Q26239535, Mercedes Richards on en-WP. On en-WP, we can generally "get" a picture of a dead person like her or Lane Smith, but JoeBugMan's Lane Smith might be accepted on Wikidata and whatever language WP that follows Wikidata. Well how about that: Lane Smith. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:14, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That image you mention as an example is ironically not a good example. It was created as part of a project to highlight a lack of images for People of Colour, and is only present on the article of the artist (who importantly is notable) and not the actual subject's page.
@Rambling Rambler The origin is special, and most (not all, see for example Leonora Pujadas-McShine) of those pictures were kicked from en-WP, mostly on a "dead person, so we'll use a photo" rationale. But my point with this example is that while it's not used in her (Richards) en-WP article, you can see from Wikidata that it is used in her article on several other WP:s, I think because they don't allow some non-free stuff the way we do. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:54, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't it terrible that we have to put up with these dreadful photos of the Royal Albert Hall? Will someone save us from "random submissions by random people online" defacing our encyclopaedia. Maybe we should delete them and pray that some professional photographer will (a) photograph these buildings at this level of quality and (b) give them away for nothing. Why are people on a website that has 100% amateur created text so prejudiced and condescending against amateur created images that are drawn or painted? Is it just a matter of quality combined with the freedom the Internet provides to be rude to strangers and newbies? Why must a painting of a person need to be created by a professional non-wikipedian, but a photograph not? Seriously? Policy based reasons please. Not prejudice. -- Colin°Talk19:27, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm speaking for myself now, but IMO there is a difference between photos and drawings. While I'm quite pleased these RAH pics are on Commons, I still don't want JoeBugMan's drawing in the Lane Smith article. Maybe that's hypocritical and/or inconsistent of me, but that's how I think. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:37, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Colin maybe in your attempt to be snarky you could not pretend to suddenly not know the pretty obvious difference between:
A) A user-submitted photograph of an actual location/object/person etc which inherently captures the actual nature of the thing in question (presuming there's no reason to suspect tampering).
B) A user-created drawing of their attempt to depict that location/object/person which does not do that and instead reflects the drawers perception of the thing in question.
One is as close to an objective representation of reality as you can fundamentally get, the other is WP:OR art project where you don't actually know if it's accurate or not and for all we know may breach Copyright of whatever it was based off of. Rambling Rambler (talk) 20:04, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I think there should be a firm No to any hand-drawn images supplied by editors themselves. We are an encyclopaedia, not DeviantArt.
The only "artworks" we should be allowing are notable images in RS for purposes where there are no other images, otherwise we have zero evidence of what exactly an editor has based their images on and are therefore essentially WP:OR in a visual form. Rambling Rambler (talk) 17:30, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a hand-drawn image supplied by an editor. It shows what it means to fold a rectangle into thirds, along the longer sides.
@Rambling Rambler, I think you have probably overstated your opinion. Do you have any inherent concerns about whether it only "reflects the drawers perception"? I mean, maybe I "don't actually know if it's accurate or not", so maybe it's showing how to fold something into 27ths instead of into thirds.
@WhatamIdoing please show where an instructional image of folding a piece of paper is relevant to hand drawn images of people in bios which is the actual subject under discussion and what I'm therefore referring to. Rambling Rambler (talk) 01:17, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Rambling, please show where your words, a firm No to any hand-drawn images supplied by editors themselves, say anything about "images of people in bios". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t know, maybe look at the opening sentence of the discussion.
I'm concerned that someone might look back at this discussion later and quote your comment out of context (because that happens all the time).
You said that you were opposed to "any hand-drawn images supplied by editors themselves". Since I asked, you've clarified that this is only about images of people.
Now we can ask: What if the image is hand-drawn, supplied by the artist, and of a person, but it's not supposed to be any particular person? Is there something wrong with a hand-drawn image, supplied by the artist, that is a diagram for an anatomy page? Or showing the correct placement of feet on a bicycle? Or illustrating an article about cooking?
What if the image is hand-drawn, supplied by the artist, and of a particular person, but it's a professional portrait? Some of the c:Category:Official portraits of presidents of the United States are paintings. Should we really fuss about it if the artist created an account and uploaded a scan themselves, rather than following our usual process of a random person on the internet downloading it from the White House's website? I don't think so, even though it's exactly the kind of thing you say should "be a firm No". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:31, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are allowed to be uploaded, but Wikipedia is under no obligation to use any of them, per WP:Consensus, WP:VNOT, and WP:COMMONSENSE. Images should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Note also MOS:IMAGEQUALITY. If I uploaded a high resolution extreme closeup photograph of some celebrity's face showing only their nose and one eye, no one would be beholden to use it in any article, no matter how accurately or reliably I portrayed their left nostril. If the consensus for any given article is against including a user-created image, regardless of medium, we can simply omit it. We as Wikipedians should not be desperately grasping to shoehorn any scrap of free media merely because it exists, nor delude ourselves into thinking that if no images are on Wikipedia then no readers will ever know what a subject looks like: readers are entirely competent to use Google, Bing, AskJeeves, etc. (maybe even books!!!!) to find other images of subjects that currently do not have high quality, freely licensed online images. We don't create or structure Wikipedia articles purely to cater people who just woke up from a 20-year coma and have no other means of receiving information. --Animalparty! (talk) 23:58, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Some years back, an editor was making a big stink about professionally painted, realistic official portraits of US presidents. The artist might try to flatter the subject! (See also posing and lighting tricks that are popular with photographers.) The colors might be slightly off! (Oh, look: Here's two copies of the same photograph, but they were scanned in with different settings, so they're noticeably different colors.) It might not be objectively accurate! (Have you heard of image filters, or have you been living under a rock for so long that you don't know what "to photoshop" means?)
I think we expect photos as the default, ordinary, normal approach to images for living people. However, there are exceptions (e.g., YouTubers who never show their faces), and I think the rule should be that this choice is available to editors if there is a consensus at the article for a particular image to be used. Which, BTW, is exactly the actual rule for photos, because nothing stays in articles without at least a minimal amount of consensus behind it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:17, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen several specific discussions on situations similar to this one, but I can't remember one that ended in "Yep, let's use that USERG drawing/painting in a BLP". Have you any good examples of current en-WP mainspace use that you describe?
I don't see any useful distinction to be made between images by people who happen to be Wikipedians and images by people who happen not to be Wikipedians. I think the more useful distinctions involve whether the portrait is the most accurate we have available (generally no for people in the era of photography, often yes for people before then, but see Wikipedia:Historical portraits and pictures for some suggestions for when a portrait is far enough removed from the historical record to make it preferable not to use it.
Above Rambling Rambler claims photographs are is as close to an objective representation of reality as you can fundamentally get, the other is WP:OR art project where you don't actually know if it's accurate or not. There are several problems with this. Firstly, Joshua Reynolds painting of Samuel Johnson is also not a photograph, yet we accept it. There's a fair degree of scepticism that any portrait painting is "accurate" vs either flattering to the person who paid lots of money to have it done or potentially unflattering against the person whom it seeks to ridicule. Secondly, unless no images of a person are available in any publication anywhere, the idea that we don't know if it is accurate is, well, silly. We can use our judement. Same way as we can judge if my photo of Kilchoman Cross is actually of that cross and not some other one. You've frankly only got my word for it unless you investigate and compare. But thirdly, there is a reason I chose those two photos of the Albert Hall, and the file description page has a clue. They are not plain photographs. Both are stitched HDR panoramas. One has twelve images taken at three different exposures and the other 21 images at three different exposures (so 63 photos combined). The latter took several minutes, during which people on the stage moved about. When merged by software, the result creates a blurry mess, ghosts and twins where people have moved. Photoshop is necessary to select a frame and literally paint that one as representative, and paint-out others as not. Then the HDR image file needs to be tone mapped to the SDR JPG you can see on your monitor. That requires artistic judgement to move around a dozen sliders about to produce something I personally think represents what I saw, but, well, who knows? You weren't there. And finally there's the problem that the hall ceiling is lit by modern LED lamps, which produce monochromatic output that is virtually impossible to capture faithfully on a camera sensor. That shade of glowing lilac on the ceiling? My best attempt at reproducing what I remember seeing. There are colours my camera saw, that my high-end professional-grade monitor can display, but which likely your low end consumer monitor cannot. Photoshop and Lightroom all guide me and my artistic eye towards finding some compromise. It is in short, about as far away from an "objective representation of reality as you can fundamentally get" for an image taken by a DSLR camera.
Editors citing WP:OR are missing a fundamental. The policy says Despite the need for reliable sources, you must not plagiarize them or violate their copyrights. Rewriting source material in your own words while retaining the substance is not considered original research. We have a mental model that a camera is like a photocopier or scanner and hand drawn or painted works are less accurate. But it isn't binary and the cameras in mobile phones today often take multiple shots and combine them with computational algorithms and AI in ways we have little control of. We are required, for text, to hand-write. We aren't allowed to scan or photocopy the source material and plonk it on Wikipedia. We need to summarise it in our own words. And this is, according to our very policy on the matter, not original research. And neither is doing that for an image. We have created a project with billions of original sentences and paragraphs created by random amatuers. The freedom we have to attempt to capture the essense of a source or explain a truth in our own words, extends to images as much as letters.
Could it actually be that for many editors here, the images presented at the top of this section are simply not to their taste? I personally wouldn't want that style of artwork if I was asking someone to paint my 80-year-old mum to help me remember her when she dies. But it is a modern style I see in magazines and newspapers and books. I'm no art critic expert. Someone earlier suggested an RFC. That would, at this point, be a phenominally bad idea. The editors on this project are mostly familiar with crafting text on articles (or arguing on talk pages). You would be asking opinions of people who have literally never considered the idea before, have no experience of doing it or selecting such works, and yet asked to give their !vote. And based on this and earlier discussions, the RFC would present images the proposer dislikes, considers amateurish or cartoonish or in some other way inferior.
Imagine going back 25 years and asking people in the street whether they think it a good idea to crowdsource an encyclopaedia. Where the articles on ketogenic diet or tourette syndrome are written by non-health professionals, just random people who turned up. Hell no! But it turned out to be not such a daft idea. At this point, I think this project lacks some direction and a community of artists who could create images for us, by hand. We have a community of photographers and I suspect a small community of SVG diagram creators, but not so much for those who draw or paint. Images are a vital component of this project. The idea that those who are here only to contribute images are WP:NOTHERE is frankly ignorant and insulting. I know of over a hundred photographers on Commons who delight in seeing their images on multiple Wikipedias and only a few of them are capable of stringing enough sentences together in a meaningful way to contribute to text in an article. They are here to build the enyclopaedia. How can we advise those who want to contribute with their artistic abilities? In a way that is welcoming, not hostile. Well, for a start, we need to stop inventing rules that don't exist.
Our article on Svetlana Mojsov has no image. Mojsov discoverd GLP-1, which led to a weight loss medication that actually worked and is transforming lives and economies. At Science.org there is a painting of Mojsov by Katty Huertas. At VinFuture Prize there is a painting of Mojsov. At the bottom of that page, there are paintings of other prize laureates. In my opinion, these would be great additions to the enyclopaedia. Wouldn't it be wonderful if those artists, or similar, could be persuaded to offer their work here? If the VinFuture Prize foundation decided to donate their commissioned works with a CC BY SA licence, we'd take them. There is no policy rule that says the creator of that image cannot be a Wikipedian, just as we have no policy that says our text at ketogenic diet must have been created by a non-Wikipedian medical professional, published in a medical publication, and released with a CC BY SA licence so we can photocopy it on to our pages. -- Colin°Talk10:54, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to keep it very brief given I've been mentioned:
I have no issue with examples such as Samuel Johnson because they are Reliably Sourced. They are works of note that have been discussed, critiqued etc and despite any potential concerns over flattery or lack thereof we have the ability to discern via Reliable Sources that they are a reasonably accurate representation of said person. They are not "random editor who has drawn what they claim to be a reasonably accurate representation of the individual" which likely violates what's set out in WP:OR under WP:IMAGEOR.
Copyright is another major issue I and several others have raised. Rather than write a long paragraph about my personal tastes of these attempted portraits we are discussing I actually looked into them and was able to positively identify nine examples of them being clearly derived from copyrighted works (including films and adverts), and have therefore nominated all of them for deletion as a result (Commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/Drawn_Portraits_Uploaded_by_JoeBugMan#Drawn_Portraits_Uploaded_by_JoeBugMan). What the inciting editor's work has actually done is provide a textbook example of why we shouldn't accept editor drawn images of people, because we have no way of actually proving they didn't breach someone else's copyright by drawing based off of a reference image.
We can Wikilawyer this (pointing to various policies and guidelines) but ultimately it comes down to simple consensus… do the editors who work on a particular article want to use a particular image?… do they like it?… is a better image available?… would no image be preferable? These are, by their nature, subjective determinations. But that’s ok. Nothing says consensus can’t be subjective. Blueboar (talk) 14:55, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Mostly I happen to dislike sketches (e.g., the one that was in Gisèle Pelicot for a while), and mostly other editors prefer photographs, so it happens that I usually get what I want on this score. But I wouldn't want to set down a firm rule against it; after all, Wikipedia:No firm rules is a core policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:38, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
agreed, i think consensus of folks matter too. But Moxy seemed to have started this because one user was mass including their art on a lot of pages at once. I think WP:ONUS applies here if someone goes and does this? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 18:09, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"We have no proof that they didn't breach someone's copyright" is a bad rationale for criteria about which types of image to include in articles. If we think an image might be a copyvio, then we have separate mechanisms for dealing with that, that do not involve throwing away big swathes of content because some of them are dubious. I would suggest that the vast majority of copyvio images on Wikipedia are photographs, many copied from the web somewhere and many taken by the uploader but of copyrighted content. Does that mean we should outlaw all photos because some of them are copyvios? No. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:16, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think Blueboar and David Eppstein are right. There is no policy reason to reject "editor drawn images of people". That a particular user has encountered problems with copyright when failing to avoid creating a derivative work is not in any way relevant to the general issue. Our project is absolutely filled with copy/paste copyright violating text lifted from our sources, and we deal with that without going "Oh, we must ban all these amateur editors, who it seems, just copy their sources". I mean, I believe quite a lot of edits don't even cite their sources. And those that do might have sneakily copied another source to hide their plagiarism. Really we should give up on this amateur-content-creation lark.
Seriously, time to put this discussion to bed. Newbie editors (or image creators) should be treated kindly and helped to avoid issues such as copyright. It is up to editors working on particular articles to reject/select images, not for people to invent imaginary policy reasons to remove them all. -- 09:11, 1 September 2025 (UTC) Colin°Talk09:11, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You cite a lot of WP:UPPERCASE. For example WP:ONUS is a link to Wikipedia:Verifiability, about WP:V not guaranteeing inclusion. But nobody was citing a source to insist an image gets included. I think you picked that shortcut because you thought the image maker had some kind of "ONUS" to convince you and other editors that they were entitled to contribute to the project. Elsewhere we saw someone say that this contributor should suggest their image on the talk page, rather than edit directly. Now, that's not an uncommon conflict avoidance strategy but it also isn't standard editing practice. All editors go about WP:BOLDly making edits and adding their own words that they think improve the project. There's no special rule that image makers have to behave differently when adding their own images that they think improve the project. There are six images at the top of this page, all added to articles that had no image (and now have no image). Yet you claim that constitutes "mass-including" and is somehow behaviour to be discouraged. This is simply "making shit up" about images not to one's taste. These so-called rules are not enforced or even given a moment's thought when editors (new or otherwise) add their photographs to articles. When one of our best photographers comes back from their travels and uploads a bunch of images to articles, we don't get this kind of nonsense, and it is frankly time-wasting nonsense. Nobody wikilawyers them about ONUS and nobody, when they find out they are just here to add photos, tell them to fuck off per WP:NOTHERE. Please drop the stick. -- Colin°Talk07:21, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your reams of text doesn’t change the fact that Wikipedia isn’t an amateur art gallery. you’re the only one going supernova here in defense of some strange principle that we humor every newbie artist, at the expense of the project.
If someone else decides to mass add amateur art to a bunch of articles, it seems wrong to let that happen without carefully allowing community consensus. And if that is somehow offensive to you, I suppose I’ll see yet another essay reply Bluethricecreamman (talk) 14:07, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The answer probably depends on what "our standards for portraits" are. One might not choose to put that in an infobox, but one might be perfectly willing to use that in a ==Legacy== section with a caption like "Penson was one of several women represented in a mural in [city]". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:05, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Judith W. Rogers Official portrait on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by Simmie Knox.
Another hypothetical: IfJudith W. Rogers was no longer with us, this portrait of her could be seen as preventing the use of a fair-use photo of her, but that's something for editors to discuss if and when it becomes an issue. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:55, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The text as was (allegedly) developed through the RfC: This text mostly comes from the closing summary of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/AI images#Relist with broader question: Ban all AI images? That RFC asked editors only "Should AI-generated images be banned from use in articles? (Where "AI-generated" means wholly created by generative AI, not a human-created image that has been modified with AI tools.)" and did not ask anyone to !vote on or even suggest any particular text.
The relevant part of the closing statement from that, BTW, says this:
"We have decided that, subject to common sense and with a number of exceptions, most images wholly generated by AI should not be used on en.wiki. Obvious exceptions include articles about AI, and articles about notable AI-generated images. There may need to be some less-obvious exceptions, and we need more thought and community input about AI enhancement of an image originally generated by a human, and about using AI to generate simple images such as Venn diagrams. The community objects particularly strongly to AI-generated images (1) of named people, and (2) in technical or scientific subjects such as anatomy and chemistry. There is also well-articulated concern about the use of AI that's been trained on copyrighted content, which sits poorly with Wikipedia's strict attitude to fair use.
Now that we've made this decision, there's an opportunity for a group of interested editors to draft an essay with a view to presenting it to the community for ratification as a guideline."
I find that AIIMAGES does not represent the RFC's closing summary in several ways. A non-exhaustive list of differences includes:
It oversimplified the result in ways that reject AI-generated images more strongly than the closing statement supports (e.g., "subject to common sense and with a number of exceptions" has been omitted).
It omitted the statement about "using AI to generate simple images such as Venn diagrams", which the closing statement did not intend to reject.
It put the (well, a biased version of the) closing statement into a policy, despite the closing statement saying that (a) it needed to be presented to the community for ratification and (b) it should be proposed as a guideline, not a policy.
I therefore think that we should not take this text (or even the closing summary itself) as holy writ; they are neither of them text that was developed by the community or approved in an RFC (or even a talk-page discussion).
Positive purpose: The positive purpose that I see is that it's stupid to have editors argue – and I believe they will – that a very simple diagram is acceptable if I draw it with paper and pencil and acceptable if I draw it in graphics software, but that exactly the same thing magically becomes very, very bad if AI generates it. Editors have to WP:Use common sense, as the closing statement (but not AIIMAGES) said, and I believe that not arguing over who made a very simple diagram counts as using common sense. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:01, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, there needs to be room for the use of AI in generating simple diagrams that are strongly directly by a prompt (eg one I just tested is [8]). When the product of the AI is just simple shapes and text that, even if generated directly by a human, would not be copyrightable, that should be fine, the AI here is only helping in simplify the time to do the drawing. Its when we're asking the AI model to do something that would likely be copyrightable if it were being made by hand by a human, with or without the support of a non-AI computer program like Photoshop. We don't want those types of images. Masem (t) 04:10, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Masem, I think that copyright is not quite the right standard. I think it should not only meet the WP:PERTINENCE standard ("Images should look like what they are meant to illustrate, regardless of whether they are authentic") but also do so at a glance. This means, e.g., that the article 9999 (number) doesn't get an AI-generated image showing 9999 dots, because it takes too long to count them up and see if the image actually shows the correct number of dots. But the article 9 (number) could have an AI-generated image showing nine dots, because anybody smart enough to edit Wikipedia should also be smart enough to count a single-digit number of dots in an image. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why having editors argue over whether something is simple and a diagram is a positive outcome. You have just posted here about the cost/benefit of discussing 144 examples, how many issues prompted this proposal? Are editors not using common sense in the way you assert? Is there a collection of simple diagrams we have been unable to use? (As an aside I just asked Gemini to help illustrate pi, and it mislablled the diameter and sort of mislabelled the circumference, so I really doubt the tool is well-aligned with the purported purpose.) CMD (talk) 04:32, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I asked a random person in the street to "illustrate pi" they might well get it wrong. Should we ban "people" as well? I'm not sure you've demonstrated anything fundamental other than that some current AI tools have limitations and that the quality of prompts is hugely influential in the quality of output. Clearly the fact you reviewed the results and you'd have been the one taking responsibility for uploading any image and inserting it into an article, means we do actually have a functioning quality mechanism. If AI had generated an image that is equivalent to one you'd have drawn (but perhaps lack artistic ability or tooling to achieve) what really would have been the problem. Indeed, why on earth would one feel the need to mention it?
I think that RFC is a classic example of asking an outrageous binary question, voting on it, and which very obviously only gets unqualified supports from knee-jerk reactionary voters. Anyone thinking more about it saw problems with the proposal. I don't see how that's a good starting point for generating P&G text. It was imo a waste of time. The community needs to explore how AI images can be used and where they can't or where there are often problems. IMO the closing comment should have been "You asked the wrong question (for which there was very clearly no consensus for support). Please let's discuss specifics and not get into a vote for quite some time, until it appears clear there's a likely consensus of this specific or that specific". -- Colin°Talk08:39, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The community has been exploring it for a few years at this point, resulting in the multiple RfCs on different aspects of the issue. CMD (talk) 09:10, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A simple diagram of a happy face, reportedly from ChatGPT. Would it really be terrible if this were used in Happy face?
Why "simple": Because I don't think that the community wants to see either medium- or high-complexity images from AI. We don't trust it. We don't want to go to a lot of work to see whether the image is accurate. We want to be able to see at a glance, with no special skills, that it's correct: A smiley face is a smiley face. File:Bi koma bost laurden.png shows the concept of 2.5 out of 4. File:Decision tree example.png shows what a flow chart looks like. File:Orange County Commission, 2025–2027.svg shows five blue dots and one red.
Why "diagrams": Because I think that the community has formed a consensus against photorealistic images generated by AI. There are photorealistic AI images that I think could be useful and appropriate (e.g., File:Woman with neck-length brown bob haircut from behind.png would be a nice illustration for Bob cut#Types), but there's a consensus against it at the moment. Is there a different category that you think would be more appropriate? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:47, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I understand why the words, the issue is the words are flexibly interpretable. Which thus informs the rest of my prior comment and its unanswered questions. CMD (talk) 02:57, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Most ordinary words are flexibly interpretable, including words like wholly generated by AI. If I give it a prompt, is that "wholly generated"? I'd say so, but a wikilawyer could "flexibly interpret" the wording differently. I think that, in practice, most editors are capable of figuring out whether something is a "very simple diagram". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:57, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While some simple diagrams might merit inclusion in the wiki, simple diagrams as a class definitely don't fall into the category of "obvious exception". I also think there is no point in even having this conversation unless we are actually experiencing a problem with simple diagrams that ought to be included getting removed from the wiki simply because they are AI-generated. -- LWGtalk22:04, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. The existing text does not match the RFC results; it does not align with common sense; it does not match the views of the community. Why should we leave known-wrong text in this policy and wait for a dispute to arise?
I am curious if you could give an example of simple diagram that you believe should be included in a Wikipedia article, but you would reject it if you learned it was AI-generated, solely on the grounds that it was AI-generated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why should we leave known-wrong text in this policy and wait for a dispute to arise? It's not known-wrong, it's believed by you to be wrong. I think it's fine. As far as I can tell it has been working for its intended purpose and hasn't resulted in negative effects so far.
I am curious if you could give an example of simple diagram that you believe should be included in a Wikipedia article, but you would reject it if you learned it was AI-generated, solely on the grounds that it was AI-generated. I cannot give an example of such a diagram. So far I have not seen any simple AI-generated diagram that I thought should be included in a Wikipedia article, but if I ever saw one, I would not advocate for its removal solely on the grounds that it was AI-generated. As a general rule, I don't advocate for the removal of content that I think is beneficial to the wiki, since that would be a waste of time. -- LWGtalk04:04, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can tell it has been working for its intended purpose and hasn't resulted in negative effects so far. Text that says you can't do something results in .... nothing happening. WAID is complaining that this "nothing" is way too wide in scope and includes lots of images that could improve the project but aren't being created or added to articles. I'm not sure how you can determine that this is "working" when one of you says the "nothing" should be "this big" and the other says no, the "nothing" should be "that big". If the "nothing" is too big, you simply won't know about all the great images you aren't getting. You can't be confident it is "working" at all.
I think for such simple diagrams this prejudice against AI is just silly. Creator will simply not admit to using AI. You won't be able to tell then if it is working or not. All you do is miss out on the images being correctly described and categorised on Commons. -- Colin°Talk07:28, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When I say "it's working" I mean that before WP:AIIMAGES there were a large number of low quality and some outright disinformational AI-generated images on enwiki, and I wasn't sure where the community consensus lay on including them. Now, when I see an AI image that is subjectively bad or of unclear accuracy, I just remove it and link this policy. The potential drawback of this policy is that high-quality AI-generated images might be removed when they should be kept. But I have yet to see a single example of this happening, so I agree with CMD that this is a not actually a serious problem.
As for "the creator will simply not admit to using AI", I share that concern. In the RFC that led to WP:AIIMAGES I advocated against an outright ban in favor of mandating that AI images be clearly labeled as AI-generated. The community eventually landed on a stronger stance, but still fell short of an outright ban and allowed for common sense exceptions. So far that seems to be working well so I see no reason to complicate things. -- LWGtalk14:29, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But if the high-quality AI-generated images were uploaded to Commons by editors who didn't admit they were AI-generated, because they knew en:wp was weirdly prejudiced, then that would also explain why you aren't seeing examples. I don't think your "mandating that AI images be clearly labelled as AI-generated" could possibly work, especially for simple stuff. How could you possibly tell the above happy face was AI-generated unless someone says.
And if people didn't bother contributing high-quality AI-generated images at all, because they knew ep:wp was weirdly prejudiced, then that would also explain why you aren't seeing examples. It isn't just that high quality images "might be removed". You seem to be saying you haven't actually seen any "common sense exceptions", which makes me concerned, as people clearly thought there should be some. -- Colin°Talk15:09, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's possible that negative attitudes toward AI on enwiki prior to the RFC somehow scared away all the people with good AI images without deterring the people with bad AI images. A simpler explanation is that AI is not currently an effective way to produce high-quality images in the vast majority of cases. If the technology improved, I might support using AI images in certain cases to produce illustrations like this to be included in an article like Simul-climbing with a caption like "diagram of a simul-climbing setup generated by GPT-9000". But that is hypothetical at this point, and the community consensus is currently to take a harder line.
It sounds like "it's working" means "I can revert images easily, in a way that minimizes the risk that I'll have to discuss this and find a consensus".
This means that if I were to add File:Carita feliz.png to Smiley#Ideogram history, with a caption that says smiley faces don't always show the outline of the head, your goal would be to remove it as quickly and simply as you can, because AI is bad and wrong and banned by policy. Questions like "Does this image improve the article?" or "Should we use some common sense?" or "Should this be discussed on the article's talk page?" are things that would require time and effort from you, so they are undesirable. The most important point is that getting rid of AI should be quick and easy for you. Right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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