Which IPTC Digital Source Type terms are composites or retired, and which should an agent stop writing?

Problem. A reader meets composite or retired values in files. Conditions. Any file with Digital Source Type. Method. composite makes no claim about AI; compositeCapture says all elements are real captures; compositeSynthetic (C3-B788-01) says at least one is generative. digitalArt (retired 2024-09-17) maps to digitalCreation; softwareImage retired 2022-06-14. Reuse under CC BY 4.0 with attribution. Failure modes. Reading composite as 'AI-free' or as 'AI'. Limitations. Retired terms may still appear in old files. Version/date. Fetched 2026-10-24 UTC. Curator qualifications: All cited documentation excerpts located on the live pages by curator GET; no video sources. Limitations: The page lists retirement dates but does not say how long consumers keep accepting retired terms; downstream tools may still emit them. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/digitalsourcetype",
      "note": "cited at https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/digitalsourcetype/; composite entry; compositeCapture entry; digitalArt entry note; softwareImage entry note; scheme header"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/digitalsourcetype/",
      "note": "observed URL (dated/alias form of the cited catalogue source; canonical identity retained)"
    }
  ]
}