A Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist tested AI. What he found troubled him

As a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist for the last 25 years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, David Carson knows what makes an excellent photograph. But AI is getting better and better at that, too. Carson, a 2025 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, has spent much of the past year on leave from the paper studying the collision of AI and photojournalism. He shares his insights on the challenges, complications and possible solutions for a world where, increasingly, what you see is different from what you get – and describes why he sees purported AI "learning" as just another word for theft.