Origin
In early 2026, the gap between what buyers were seeing in listing photos and what sellers were actually offering had become impossible to ignore.
Generative AI had collapsed the cost and effort of image manipulation to near zero. "Housefishing" became industry shorthand for listings where the photography no longer resembled the property. Cotality's 2026 buyer trust survey found US confidence in AI-assisted home search had fallen from 30% to 16% in a single year. California passed AB 723, making undisclosed digital alteration of listing photos a misdemeanor effective January 1, 2026. Multiple MLSs responded with watermark requirements. State legislatures began drafting analogous laws.
The problem was real and the regulatory response was beginning. But there was no standardized way for honest producers to signal their honesty. Every photographer, editor, brokerage, and MLS was reinventing the disclosure wheel in their own format, with their own vocabulary, to their own audience — creating noise where the buyer needed signal.
VIDP started as a working photographer's answer to a working photographer's problem: how do I make it easy for agents, buyers, and regulators to see that my work is honest? It then expanded into a fuller specification addressing the other audiences who needed a shared vocabulary for this disclosure — editors, brokerages, MLSs, and buyers themselves.
Governance posture
VIDP is designed to be adoptable at scale without becoming captive to any single organization. That posture is expressed in three specific commitments:
Open license. The specification, the pill artwork, and all supporting documentation are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Anyone can read, adopt, reference, or translate VIDP. Attribution and a link to the canonical specification are the only requirements.
Voluntary language. The specification uses permissive, recommendation-based language throughout — "should," "is recommended," "is best" — rather than mandatory directives. This reflects VIDP's current status as a voluntary industry standard and preserves the freedom of regulatory or organizational bodies to translate its recommendations into enforceable obligations if and when they choose to.
Producer-led authority. Under Section 3.8, pill application is determined by the producing party's intent, not by an external perceptibility test. This aligns VIDP with how professional licensure and self-regulation already work in most industries, and avoids the spec becoming a rules-lawyering exercise between adopters and reviewers.
Future versions may evolve these commitments in response to real adoption experience. The changelog on the specification page documents every change.
License & attribution
VIDP is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the specification in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercially
Under one condition:
- Attribution — you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made
Based on the Verified Image Disclosure Protocol (VIDP) by Kennith Wheeler, Kennith Wheeler Photography. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Available at vidp.org.
There are no trademark restrictions on "VIDP" or "Verified Image Disclosure Protocol" as of version 1.1. Adopters can reference these names freely. A trademark registration may be considered in future versions if adoption reaches a scale where attribution dilution becomes a concern.
Contact
Feedback, proposed amendments, implementation reports, and inquiries about adoption can be sent to:
For questions about verification gallery infrastructure, technical implementation, or integration with existing systems:
For press, regulatory, or institutional inquiries:
Kennith Wheeler Photography · Chickasha, Oklahoma · United States