"We're sorry," Photoshop informed me with the condescension of an overzealous bouncer, "but nudity has been detected."
Oh really? In a nude photograph? Who would have thought! And this despite being a paying Adobe customer. But apparently, that doesn't qualify me to actually use the software I'm paying for.
Fine then, Plan B: I copy the image, dutifully censor it with a color overlay like a schoolboy in detention, let the AI do its thing, and then paste the original back in. A digital game of hide-and-seek that makes about as much sense as wearing a bikini in a sauna. But hey, the artificial intelligence is happy — and isn't that what really matters in the end?
And here's the best part: When I tried to tell an AI about my troubles, it seriously gave me the digital version of "Sorry, I can't help you with that" — presumably afraid of frying its circuits with my not-safe-for-work words. The irony that even a conversation about censorship gets censored seemed to dawn on only me. Maybe I should replace all nipples in the text with asterisks first, so the artificial intelligence dares to speak with me.
Then comes the next act in this comedy of errors: I dare to use the word "nude" on Patreon — where, by the way, I already had to jump through an authentication obstacle course stricter than entering some countries. PLOP! A warning window pops up as if I'd just entered the nuclear launch codes. "Potentially community guidelines violating content detected! Our Trust & Safety Team will review this." Right. Censorship in a text. About nude photography. For adults. On a platform for nude photography. Behind a paywall.
In the past, there were at least real people in the Philippines deciding what was acceptable and what wasn't (not that this made it any better). Today, AI does it — faster, more efficient, and above all: dumber. It blocks accounts like Angelique's, flags harmless images as "inappropriate," and hands out digital house bans faster than an over-anxious elementary school principal.
And so here I sit, a photographer in 2025, playing digital hide-and-seek with algorithms. I trick, deceive, and disguise, just to do my job. A job that, by the way, is as old as art itself. But you already knew that.