How We Work with AI
( Yes, AI can make a unicorn. That isn’t how most of our work happens. )
AI is one of the tools Lemon Juice uses—not the author of the work.
It can help with research, organization, drafting, prototyping, testing, production, and exploring possibilities that might otherwise be too slow to attempt. Sometimes AI-generated or hybrid imagery is deliberately part of the finished work. When AI materially shapes what you are looking at or reading, we make that clear.
Judgment, interpretation, and final decisions stay with people. That isn’t a limitation we’re working around. It’s the point.
Photography presented as a record stays a record. It is not quietly replaced with synthetic imagery.
Private, unpublished, and client material is handled cautiously, with attention to consent and context. Not every project needs AI, and using it is never the default simply because it is available.
Ahimsa & Responsibility
Our approach is grounded in ahimsa, the yogic principle of nonviolence.
“Love lies at the core of nonviolence and begins with our love of self.”
We hold onto this sentence because love names a specifically human responsibility: care, forgiveness, relationship, judgment, moral responsibility, and regard for other people. These are not features of software.
For Lemon Juice, this means technology remains subordinate to human care, judgment, responsibility, and relationship.
While reviewing an earlier version of this policy, Deborah Adele offered an additional reflection:
“The intention, goals, values that we put into a technology when we create it or use it becomes inseparable from the technology itself. It then acts upon us in those very ways. Ahimsa or love asks for great care when we use powerful technologies.”
— Deborah Adele, correspondence with Lemon Juice, July 2026
Deborah Adele’s writing is an influence on this practice. Her inclusion here does not imply her involvement in or endorsement of every part of this policy.
Our approach to AI follows the six evolving principles outlined in Human + Planet First.
The bird chirps. The human decides.