AI & Editorial Transparency
Camping with Style is written by me, Shell Robshaw-Bryan, based on more than 30 years of my own camping and travel experience, though I do have a small team of contributors who also write for the blog from time to time.
Like many people, I’m increasingly concerned by the unchecked proliferation of generative AI and the lack of transparency seen across the internet and throughout many industries. I’d genuinely love to say I don’t have a use case for it at all, but I’m a one-woman business with no editor on staff. The truth is that there are times when I find AI useful and times when I do actively use it.
What I want more than anything is to be transparent about that. What I do here on Camping with Style might not strictly fall under official guidelines or EU directives like Article 50, but I feel it’s my duty as a creative to be honest about how I use AI on this blog. Over time this may well change and evolve, but as it stands, here’s the lowdown.
My thoughts on our rapidly evolving (dystopian nightmare?) world
As an ex-graphic designer and someone who loves to create, I understand the importance of utilising and celebrating human creativity and I’m careful about protecting it.
My own use of AI stays largely confined to productivity. I have the skills to edit images in Photoshop myself, but AI can often do that same job much faster.
There’s a discomfort in that, though. My own decades of writing and creative work online – from the early days of DeviantArt to the cards, books and prints I design and sell – are part of what LLMs have learned from, cutting the original creators out of the process entirely. It’s an uncomfortable duality, benefiting from these tools while knowing, and disliking what they were built on.
That said, AI has been part of my daily workflow for at least three years now, but transparency matters to me. I want to share exactly how and where I use it – it’s my way of giving you enough insight to make your own informed decisions about how you choose to engage with my content.
Words
Every word you read on this blog is written by me. My approach will always be human-first, writing from real experience and research. No copy on Camping with Style is wholly AI-generated. What I do use AI for, however, is proofreading. I find it invaluable for catching typos, spotting an incomplete sentence, garbled thoughts, that sort of thing.
Photos
The vast majority of images on this site are genuine photographs, taken by Mark or me, of real places we’ve actually been to. A small proportion – roughly 2% as of August 2026 – are AI-generated. Typically used where I need an illustrative image rather than a photo from a specific trip or when an image is required to match the vibe of a collaborative post.
Where this is the case, I’ve aimed to label it clearly on the page it’s used on. I also occasionally use AI-assisted editing inside Photoshop to balance colours or remove something distracting from the background of an otherwise real photo I’ve taken – that’s more standard editing though; AI just helps me do it more quickly.
Collaborations
Paid content, which we refer to as collaborations, makes up under 5% of everything published on this site. I review it before it goes live and do my best to catch and refuse anything that reads as AI-generated, but I can’t personally guarantee that content supplied by a third party is entirely AI-free.
Editorial Control
Everything published here has been written, reviewed, or edited by me personally before it goes live. I hold full editorial responsibility for what’s on this site.
I’ve not chosen to disclose our use of AI because of guidelines or regulations. I’m choosing to do so because I think it’s the ethical thing to do, and it’s the sort of clarity I appreciate from publishers and businesses myself. I’m publishing this proactively, because if you’re going to trust my recommendation on a sleeping bag, a campsite, or a glamping site in the Peak District, you deserve to know that those recommendations are genuine and not something simply dreamed up by AI, and it’s this underlying trust and authenticity which continues to matter to me a whole lot more than pumping out low quality content or ranking for any algorithm.
