I've recently had two photos rejected. Both photos are of a sculpture of a giant scallop shell on a beach in the UK. One of the pics is shown here. The reason why they have been rejected is that they have both been flagged as photos of 'Currency'. It looks nothing like coinage or paper money! The description on both photos clearly states that it is a sculpture by the artist, Maggi Hambling. This nonsensical rejection indicates to me that both photos were not evaluated by a human being.

This is clearly a mistake by Getty's AI...thing. Can you appeal a rejection?

Thanks

It could be that you used some kind of Denoise or some other AI editing tool that they found buried in the metadata and are rejecting it. However, I would just resubmit. In a pool of millions of images I have learned that it is not worth it to spend all this time fighting a single rejection.

The rejection as 'currency' is ridiculous. However, there seems to be a lot of variation between inspectors in whether they'll accept public artworks or not, even if submitted as editorial, and even if the artist died over 70 (UK) years ago, and I've included the artist's date in the description.
I tend to send that stuff to Alamy nowadays, for all the good that 'usually' does, but I've been pleasantly surprised sometimes.

iStock has never accepted photos of sculptures for me, so I would not bother fighting this. Even if they realize these are not coins, the chance of them accepting this is still small.

Quote from: Her Ugliness on May 13, 2026, 08:52
iStock has never accepted photos of sculptures for me, so I would not bother fighting this. Even if they realize these are not coins, the chance of them accepting this is still small.

Same for me. Anything that could be considered 'art' such as sculptures or statues, doesn't get accepted if it's the main focus or prominent in the image, even if submitted as editorial.

The wrong rejection reason may have been given in error, but an appeal would end up with the same result.