PhotoIreland

The situation

In July 2025, PhotoIreland opened the International Centre for the Image, a groundbreaking museum in Dublin Docklands, with support from Kennedy Wilson and the Arts Council of Ireland. Its leadership is committed to showing the full range of photographic and image-based arts practice today, including works that experiment with generative AI and AI image manipulation.

Staff are also experimenting with AI tools in their day-to-day work. Conscious of the EU AI Act’s transparency rules, and eager to adopt a robust governance position, PhotoIreland has set out to incorporate AI ethics into its Code of Practice. In addition to internal policies, PhotoIreland will publish a public AI values statement, an important piece of its commitment to maintaining public trust.

The plan

1. Audit. Map where AI already touches the organisation: exhibitions, collections, visitor-facing tools, marketing, staff use, vendors, and the data underneath.
2. Consult. A short staff survey and a handful of stakeholder interviews, designed to take as little of a busy team’s time as possible.
3. Articulate and publish. Principles anchored to PhotoIreland’s mission, a public values statement, a disclosure practice for AI-assisted work, and practical staff guidelines.

What we’re aiming for

• A public values statement that says plainly how the museum will and won’t use AI.
• A clear way to tell visitors when work on the walls was made with AI.
• Staff guidelines that make good judgment the easy default.
• A model other small and mid-sized museums can learn from.

Why it matters

Every museum that shows contemporary image-making will have to answer this question. PhotoIreland is choosing to answer it first, in public, and on its own terms.

This project is underway. I’ll update this page with what changed once the work is published.