Bad moon rising: AI debate erupts over ‘colourised’ version of a classic Ansel Adams photo

An AI-generated “colourised” version of Ansel Adams’s Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1941) shown by New York gallery Danziger at the Aipad Photography Show in April sparked backlash among photographers and the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. The AI work was offered in three edition sizes of ten priced at $6,000, $8,000, and $10,000, while the Ansel Adams Gallery (run by Adams’s grandson) sells prints of Moonrise for over $100,000. The trust said it was not consulted, condemned the display as exploiting Adams’s name without identifying a human creator, and said it asked dealer James Danziger to remove the work, alleging he kept it on view and used the fair presentation to promote AI colourisation of other estates. On 25 May, Danziger defended the project, arguing the image is in the public domain and that he consulted a leading copyright lawyer before presenting what he called a transformative work.

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