AI Usage

Last updated: October 2026

‍

I use AI.

There. I thought I'd get that out of the way first.

I use it for research, to challenge my thinking, to explore ideas and sometimes to help me find the question I haven't thought to ask yet. Used well, I think it's an extraordinary tool.

But there is a line I won't cross.

Moonrise Media exists to find and tell stories about real people. People trust me with their experiences, sometimes with things that are deeply personal, and an audience in turn trusts that what I show them is an honest representation of those people and their stories.

AI must never break that trust.

Real people remain real

I will never use AI to make somebody appear to have said or done something they didn't.

I won't clone someone's voice, manufacture an expression or performance, create a synthetic version of a contributor, or otherwise use AI to misrepresent a real person.

Nor will I quietly generate something and present it as documentary reality.

There may be circumstances where generative technology has a legitimate creative use, particularly where something cannot safely or practically be shown. If that ever becomes appropriate to a story, its use will be considered carefully, agreed with the people concerned where relevant, and made clear enough that an audience isn't being deceived about what they are seeing.

The test is quite simple:

Could the use of AI cause someone to believe something happened that didn't?

If the answer is yes, we don't pretend otherwise.

AI can help with the work. It doesn't get to replace the humans

There is a considerable difference between using AI to assist a creative process and asking it to be the creative process.

I am comfortable using technology behind the scenes where it helps me research, organise, interrogate ideas, transcribe conversations, solve technical problems or explore possibilities.

But the decisions remain human.

The storyfinding is human. The conversations are human. The judgement about what belongs in the story is human. And ultimately I am responsible for every film that carries the Moonrise Media name.

That responsibility can't be delegated to an algorithm.

What about the words on this website?

Yes, AI will have helped with some of them too.

I've spent more than 40 years writing software, rather than articles and blog posts. That career has involved a lot of writing – internal technical documents, specifications and, at times, specifications intended for very large external audiences.

It turns out that writing precise technical documentation and writing engaging prose aren't quite the same thing.

Left entirely to my own devices, I have a tendency to ramble, disappear down interesting tangents and construct sentences that really ought to have been several sentences some considerable time ago and so AI is very useful at reigning me in - but not with this sentence!

So I use it to help me structure ideas, question what I'm trying to say, tighten my writing and sometimes find a clearer way of expressing something that started in my head.

What I don't do is type a prompt, ask AI to write me a blog post and publish whatever comes back.

Quite the opposite. I can spend a ridiculous amount of time working back and forth with AI on a piece of writing: rejecting things I wouldn't say, putting back nuances it has helpfully removed, challenging assumptions, changing the structure and gradually shepherding it towards something I'm comfortable putting my name to.

The thoughts, experiences and opinions are mine. AI can help me communicate them more effectively.

And if my name is on something, I'm responsible for what it says.

And absolutely no AI music

This one is personal.

I've been a drummer since my teens and music has been part of my life for almost as long as I can remember. I don't even use music streaming services. The music I listen to was conceived, written and performed by clever, talented and creative human beings and I believe those people deserve to be recognised and rewarded for creating it.

The same applies to the music in my films.

I will not use AI-generated music in a Moonrise Media production.

The composers and musicians whose work accompanies the stories I tell may never appear on screen, but they are part of the creative process too. Their work has value.

Protecting the people behind the story

AI also raises less visible questions.

Client information, interview material and particularly the words, images and voices of contributors shouldn't simply be fed into systems without considering where that information goes, how it might be retained and what it might subsequently be used for.

So the same duty of care I apply when filming somebody extends to the technology I use afterwards.

Consent still means consent just because a computer is involved.

Human stories deserve human responsibility

AI will change. The tools I use will change and, inevitably, this policy will change with them.

So I don't want to create a long list of today's permitted and prohibited technologies which will probably be out of date before I've finished writing it.

Instead, I'll stick with the principle underneath all of this.

Technology can help me find a story, understand it and tell it.

It must never give somebody a voice that wasn't theirs, take away the voice of the person who created something, or ask an audience to believe something is real when it isn't.

Because if storytelling is built on trust, no shortcut is worth breaking it.