AI-Generated Imagery and Altitude
Why You’ll Sometimes See
AI-Generated Imagery at Altitude
AI: Smart enough to change the world.
Also AI: “Humans have…what, 3 arms?”
If you’ve noticed AI-generated imagery in some of our showcase posters or marketing lately, you’re not imagining it. A few people have asked a very fair question:
"Why not just use photos of real Altitude students?"
The short answer is: sometimes we absolutely do. Real photos and videos of our community are—and will continue to be—a huge part of Altitude.
But when we’re creating artwork for a themed showcase or building a marketing campaign, there are times when I intentionally choose to use AI. There are also, occasionally, times when Facebook and Instagram decide to use it for me.
So I thought it was worth explaining the difference, why I use it, and how I think about AI at Altitude.
First, Privacy Matters
Using a real student in a promotional campaign means using that person’s face and body to represent an event—sometimes repeatedly across social media, email, our website, posters, and paid advertising.
Even when someone is perfectly happy to have a class photo shared, that doesn’t necessarily mean they want to become the face of an advertising campaign.
I never want participating at Altitude to come with an unspoken expectation that you also need to be a model for us.
This is particularly important because our community includes both adults and youth. Using AI-generated concept imagery gives me another option when I want a human figure to communicate movement or emotion without asking a real person to give up their privacy.
Sometimes We’re Creating a World, Not Documenting a Class
Our showcases usually have a very specific visual identity.
For something like Velvet Noir, I might be looking for teal velvet, silver accents, dramatic lighting, a particular apparatus, a specific body position, and a dark, glamorous feeling. Another showcase might need to feel whimsical, mysterious, vintage, theatrical, or surreal. Finding an existing photograph with the right apparatus, costume, pose, lighting, colors, orientation, and overall mood can be nearly impossible.
In those situations, AI gives me a way to create concept art that says: “This is what this show feels like.” Rather than simply: “Here is a person doing aerial.”
It Helps Us Create a Cohesive Visual Story
There’s a reason you can scroll through our social media and immediately tell when several posts belong to the same event or campaign. Color, typography, imagery, and mood all work together.
For a showcase, I want to create an entire little visual world around the event. AI sometimes allows me to do that without trying to force a collection of unrelated photographs into the same aesthetic.
Of course, I could simply create graphics without people in them—and sometimes I do.
But Pole and Aerial are movement arts. A human shape, a dramatic pose, or the suggestion of movement communicates the feeling of what we do in a way that an empty apparatus often can't.
Then There’s Facebook & Instagram AI…
This is another part of the conversation that I think is important to explain, because not every AI-generated element you see in an Altitude ad was something I intentionally created or selected. Creating and managing advertising campaigns for a small business is incredibly time-consuming.
At the same time, Meta has increasingly built AI-powered creative tools directly into its advertising platform. These tools can generate or modify backgrounds, images, text, layouts, and different versions of ads. And the settings change.
A lot.
I do my best to review my settings and turn off features I don’t want, but occasionally something changes, a new option appears, or I miss a setting.
And Facebook runs off and gets a little more “creative” than I asked it to.
That is never my intention.
When I discover that Meta has generated or modified something in a way I didn’t approve, it usually results in me going back into the campaign and finding whatever setting I now need to explicitly disable to prevent it from happening again.
So if you ever see an Altitude ad and think:
“Hmm…that doesn’t really look like them.”
There’s a chance I’m thinking exactly the same thing—and heading back into Ads Manager to figure out which box Meta decided needed checking this week.
There’s Also the Reality of Running a Small Business
Altitude doesn’t have a corporate marketing department. There isn’t an advertising agency down the hall, a full-time graphic designer waiting for an assignment, or a photographer and group of models available every time we launch a class.
There’s…me. (Along with an amazing team whose actual jobs are taking care of the people who walk through our doors).
Creating graphics, writing emails, building ads, posting to social media, promoting workshops, launching new classes, marketing Youth Circus, producing showcases—and actually running the studio—takes an enormous amount of time.
Technology helps me do more of that work efficiently.
I absolutely use AI as part of that process. But there’s an important difference between using AI intentionally as a creative tool and allowing technology to make creative decisions for Altitude without my involvement. That distinction matters to me.
AI Is a Tool—Not Our Identity
I also understand that AI is complicated.
Legitimate conversations are happening around AI-generated art, including concerns about artists, intellectual property, environmental impact, and how these technologies should be used.
I don’t think the answer is pretending those conversations don’t exist. I also don’t think every use of AI is automatically good—or automatically bad.
For me, it is simply one tool in a much larger creative toolbox.
We use professional and candid photography.
We use real videos from classes and performances.
We use Canva and traditional graphic design.
We use content created by our students and instructors.
And sometimes, when I’m trying to visually create a world that doesn’t exist yet, I use AI-generated imagery.
What I don’t want AI to replace is the actual Altitude community. Because that is the part that matters most.
And in the Interest of Full Transparency…
Yes, I used AI to help me write this blog post. The thoughts, opinions, and experiences are mine. I knew what I wanted to say, and AI helped me organize it, edit it, and turn my approximately 47 scattered thoughts into something you might actually want to read. And that’s probably the best example I can give you of how I view AI at Altitude.
It’s a tool.
It helps me create, communicate, and run a small business more efficiently.
It doesn’t replace the ideas, decisions, people, or community behind any of it.
AI might help us imagine the world of our next showcase.
It might help me find a better way to explain an idea.
It might even help me get a marketing campaign finished before midnight.
But when those showcase lights come up?
The performers are real. The strength is real. The artistry is real. The courage is real. The community is real.
— Tricia, Owner
Altitude Aerial Arts
Comments