Shep WoolleySONGS, SALT & STORIES
Oil painting of a large warship with sails loosed leaving Portsmouth Harbour among small boats and buildings

AI NOTICE

AI notice: images, text and who checks them

One labelled AI picture, real photographs everywhere else, and a person checking every text before it goes live.

HMS Asia leaving Portsmouth Harbour, painted by William Adolphus Knell, a real painting and not an AI image. Painting: William Adolphus Knell, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

AI-generated images on this site

This page explains where artificial intelligence is used on shepwoolley.co.uk and how it is labelled. Almost every picture on the site is a real photograph or a historical painting or engraving from Wikimedia Commons, credited in its caption with the photographer or artist and the licence.

One image is different: the tall ship under sail at the top of the homepage was created with an AI image tool. It carries an "AI" mark on the image itself, the words "AI-generated image" in its caption and in its alternative text, and a machine-readable note in the file's metadata. Any further AI image added to the site will be labelled in the same ways, and the guide does not alter or remove provenance markings from images it uses.

No photograph of a real person, ship or place on the site has been generated or altered with AI. Where a picture shows something specific, such as HMS Victory in dry dock or a folk club in London, it is a real photograph of that thing.

AI tools in research and writing

AI tools are used to support research and drafting, for example to gather published sources, compare dates and suggest a structure for a page. They do not decide what is published. Every text is read by a person for substance and checked against named sources before it goes live, and the checks are repeated when a page is updated. Facts that cannot be confirmed are left out, which is why some pages leave a gap instead of a guess.

The guide never uses AI to put words into the mouth of Shep Woolley or anyone else. Quotations come from interviews, liner notes and published material, and are attributed.

How to check a picture yourself

Every photograph and painting on the site has a caption that names its creator and links to its file page on Wikimedia Commons. The file page records where the picture came from, who took or painted it, when, and under which licence it may be used. If a caption looks wrong, or a picture seems to show something other than what the text says, the file page is the quickest way to check, and a message to the editors will get it looked at.

The same standard applies to the historical paintings and engravings. They are reproductions of works held by museums such as Royal Museums Greenwich and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and they are shown as the artists made them, apart from cropping to fit the page.

Editorial responsibility

The editors of shepwoolley.co.uk are responsible for the content of this site and can be reached at [email protected]. Corrections and questions about how a page was made are welcome; the contact page explains what happens to a message, and the terms of use cover re-use of the content.