Flash Science
How we make our images
Some pictures on this site are photographs. Some are made by an image model. We think you are entitled to know which is which, on every page, without having to guess.
The short version
Every article carries one large cover image at the top and, usually, two smaller pictures inside the text.
- The cover image is an AI-created illustration. It is generated from a written description we wrote for that story. It is not a photograph of the thing being described, it is not a microscope image, and it is not a record of any measurement.
- The pictures inside the article are real photographs taken by photographers, licensed for commercial use. Where the photographer's name is known we print it under the picture.
Every AI cover image carries a caption saying so. If a picture has no such caption, it is a photograph.
Why we use illustration at all
Most of what we write about cannot be photographed honestly. Nobody can photograph a magnetic field, the inside of a working transformer, or the moment a lake stops mixing. The alternatives are a diagram, an illustration, or nothing. We chose illustration for the cover because it sets the mood of a story without pretending to be evidence for it.
The line we do not cross
A generated image is never used as evidence. Specifically, we do not publish AI-created images that pretend to be:
- microscope images, scans, spectra or any other instrument output
- charts, graphs, readouts or measured data of any kind
- documentation of a specific real event
- photographs of real, named people
Where a story genuinely needs a technical figure — an anatomical structure, a circuit, a load path, a chemical mechanism — that figure is drawn by hand from cited sources and checked by someone qualified in the field. It is never generated. Those stories wait until the figure exists.
What we still get wrong
Image models make mistakes that are easy to miss. A generated picture can put a detail in the wrong place, invent a plausible object that does not exist, or render text as nonsense. We review every cover image before publication and reject the ones that misdescribe the story, but we will not catch everything. If a picture on this site looks wrong to you, please tell us — we would rather fix it than defend it.
Photograph licensing
In-article photographs are licensed from Pexels under the Pexels License, which permits commercial use. Attribution is not required by that licence, but we record the photographer and the source for every photograph we use, and we credit the photographer on the page wherever the name is known.
If this changes
If we ever start using our own photography, or change how illustrations are made, this page is updated before the first such image is published — not afterwards.
See also our editorial methodology, which covers how the words are researched, sourced and corrected.