Nine News Blamed AI for Sexualising a Politician's Photo. Adobe Said a Human Had to Sign Off.

What happened

In January 2024, Australian broadcaster Nine News aired a segment featuring Georgie Purcell, an Animal Justice Party member of parliament in Victoria. The photograph used on screen was not the one taken of her. It had been processed through generative AI tools and the result made her clothing appear more revealing, altering her appearance in a way that sexualised how she was presented to viewers. Purcell noticed and said so publicly, and the story moved quickly from a local complaint into a national conversation about how AI is being used in newsrooms and at whose discretion.

Nine News initially pointed toward Adobe Photoshop as the source of the change, an explanation that implied the software had acted on its own. Adobe's response settled that question. A spokesperson told the BBC that Photoshop's generative AI features, including the fill and expand tools capable of modifying existing images, require human intervention and approval before any changes take effect. The software does not alter photographs autonomously. Someone at Nine News had to review the result and choose to proceed with it.

The distance between those two accounts is where the incident sits. A politician's image was altered to make her appear more sexual, it was broadcast to a national audience, and when challenged, the broadcaster's first explanation directed attention to the software rather than to any editorial decision. That sequence, an unexplained change followed by a deflection toward the tool, is precisely the dynamic that becomes more available as AI image editing becomes routine in production workflows.

The reaction was pointed. Critics focused not only on the specific alteration but on what it signalled about institutional attitudes toward women in public life and toward the use of AI in editorial decisions without apparent human review. Calls followed for clearer standards governing when and how AI tools can be applied to photographs of public figures, and for media organisations to be transparent about what has been changed and why.

What the incident makes visible is the absence of a traceable record. When AI tools are embedded in editorial workflows, the questions of who directed a change, who reviewed the output, and who authorised it before broadcast become harder to answer unless the organisation is required to document each step. Without a provable record of what a system did and at whose instruction it did it, accountability defaults to whatever the organisation asserts after the fact, and the tool becomes a convenient place to stop the conversation.

Reported impact

Affected parties

Not publicly disclosed

Harm type

Not publicly disclosed

Scale

Not publicly disclosed

Financial impact

Not publicly disclosed

Regulatory action

Not publicly disclosed

Classification

Organization

Not publicly disclosed

AI system

Not publicly disclosed

Industry

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Country

Not publicly disclosed

Provider

Not publicly disclosed

Incident type

Not publicly disclosed

Relevant governance controls

Governance control mapping is not available for this record.

• No controls mappedNot publicly disclosed

Control mapping is analytical. It does not state that any control would have prevented the incident.

Sources and evidence

This record was researched and written by the Index. The event is also catalogued in the following database, which is listed for cross-reference.