Is the editing done by real people or AI?
Last updated: 2026-11-13
Short Answer:
Real people. Every photo is opened, edited and finished by one of our editors, who reads your request, plans the steps and chooses the right tool for each one. AI tools help with some steps, such as reducing blur or enlarging a low-resolution photo, but the work is mainly done by hand.
AI has been part of photo editing for years
Editing software used intelligent, automatic features long before ChatGPT. Photoshop’s Content-Aware Fill, which fills in the space left by a removed object, has been around since 2010.
It’s natural to wonder whether AI makes a photo less real. Any retouching changes the original pixels. The question isn’t whether a photo was touched, but whether the result looks natural and still looks like you. That’s what we check on every photo.
Why AI alone isn’t enough
AI apps have come a long way, but on their own they often miss. A face can quietly change until it no longer looks like the person, and details you never asked about can change as well.
That’s why our work still depends on skilled editors. Even when AI handles one step, an editor opens your photo, checks and refines that step, works through the rest and brings everything together. That part of the job can’t be automated.
What our editors do
Our editors do far more than click buttons. They:
- Turn your instructions, even loosely worded ones, into clear editing steps
- Choose the right tool for each step, whether it uses AI or not
- Fix anything a tool gets wrong, and blend every change so it looks natural
- Check that you still look like you before the photo is sent
Which AI tools we use, and your privacy
We don’t use your photos to train AI ourselves. The third-party AI tools we use most often, and how they handle your photo, are described in Are my photos safe and private?.
Why this matters for you
Your photo may be seen by your clients, your fans or the people you love, and it deserves more care than an automated result can give. That’s why no photo leaves us until a real person has made the final call.
That’s the difference between an app and a service.