AI Use Policy for Nonfiction

What we believe

A true story is a promise. AI makes it cheaper to break that promise than ever before — a generated image can look like evidence, a cloned voice can sound like a confession. This policy exists because the tools got powerful, not because our ethics got flexible.

What AI does in our productions

• Reenactment and previsualization. Stylized, illustrated dramatizations of events established in the record — cleaner shots, new angles, consistent characters across episodes. Never presented as footage.
• Research assistance. Transcription, translation, timeline assembly, records organization. Every AI-surfaced fact is verified against its source before it enters the film.
• Restoration. Upscaling, cleanup, and repair of archival footage and audio. Restoration clarifies what is there; it never adds what isn't.

What AI never does here

1. Never fabricates evidence. No generated image, video, or audio is ever presented as a real recording, photograph, or document.
2. Never invents speech. No person — living or dead — is ever depicted saying words they did not say on record. Dramatized interiority is allowed only as a faithful rendering of recorded speech (if he said it out loud, the film may show him thinking it).
3. Never invents attributes. No embellishment, no "make him look meaner." Portrayal equals the record — never perception.
4. Never photorealistic people. Real persons appear in our dramatizations only in a visibly stylized, illustrated treatment — recognizable as types, never as portraits. If it could be mistaken for a photograph, we don't ship it.
5. Never without consent where consent is obtainable. Likeness work with living private persons requires their agreement or a clear public-record basis plus legal review. Where consent cannot be obtained, depiction is limited to adjudicated, documented fact.

Disclosure, always

Every AI-generated or AI-altered image, shot, or voice in a BOATS production is labeled as such — on screen for its full duration, in the credits, and in the production notes. If the audience can't tell it's AI, we've failed, even if we labeled it.

The source-only rule

We piece together from the footage; we never invent. Court transcripts, recordings, documents, and firsthand accounts are the license to depict — every dramatized beat traces to a source, and a beat without a source doesn't get a panel. Our research dossiers grade every fact by confidence, and unconfirmed facts never leave the dossier.

Human accountability

AI proposes; humans decide. A credited human producer reviews and signs off on every AI-generated element before it enters a cut. The buck stops with a person, not a model.

On the audience

We don't tell you what to think. We show you the record — both sides where both exist — and let you decide. If our film reads like an argument, we've failed; it should read like an inventory.