Stanford used AI to race-swap student in cafeteria ad, altered others' faces
Residential & Dining Enterprises replaced a white male student with a Black woman and slimmed other faces in promotional materials.
What to know
- Stanford R&DE modified student photographs for advertisements using AI, replacing student Billy Ramirez with a Black woman and slimming the faces of other pictured students.
- Ramirez said he was upset that Stanford made representation choices about him without consent, describing the alteration as making him feel 'silenced and erased.'
- The modifications were discovered when Ramirez received the advertisement and compared it to the original photographer's images, prompting coverage by The Stanford Review.
Billy Ramirez Stanford student, subject of AI alterationStanford Residential & Dining Enterprises University dining and housing division
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlesposts
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Stanford Review publishes before-and-after photos of AI modifications
The student-run Stanford Review obtained and published side-by-side comparisons of the original photographs and the AI-altered advertisement versions, documenting the race swap and facial modifications.
“I was driving to school from my hometown when my friend sent me the images comparing the banner to the original photos, and I was immediately baffled. At first, I found it hilarious that they had used AI to completely change our appearances, including my race and gender.”
— Billy Ramirez, Stanford student · source -
first by NY Post, 1d ago · also HN Frontpage, Breitbart
2 more headlines
- Stanford R&DE Uses AI to Race Swap Students for Advertising HN Frontpage · 1d ago
- Stanford Caught Using AI to Race Swap Hispanic Male Student for Black Female In Ad Breitbart · 1d ago
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Stanford uses AI to add a Black student and make students more attractive 😬 https:// stanfordreview.org/stanford-r- de-uses-ai-to-race-swap-students-for-advertising/
2 more of the top 3 · 14 posts in this stretch
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Really seems like they used it to anonymize the students, but that is a lot less polarizing. Does it matter if they swapped the race? They also swapped all identifying facial features of anyone in the picture. That might have even been the prompt they used in the first place.I am not a big fan of gen ai, but freak outs about nothingness detract…
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so this poster was removed because it violated the AI policy, huh? the person who asked the AI to replace a hispanic male with a black female was otherwise business as usual, apparently. I swear sometimes the diversity crowd is the most racist and sexist of them all.
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background
Ramirez describes feeling 'silenced and erased' by the alteration — Student Billy Ramirez expressed that while initially amused, he was upset that Stanford made choices about his representation without his consent, stating the alteration made him feel removed from an image meant to include him.
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background
Stanford R&DE alters student photos with AI for advertisements — Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises used AI to modify student images in promotional materials, including race-swapping Billy Ramirez '27 with a Black woman and slimming the faces of other students pictured in a cafeteria scene.
What people are saying 9 voices from 3 sites · best of 14 · verbatim
- Yesterday
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SF Chronicle: Stanford violated its AI policy by turning a Hispanic student into a fake Black woman in ad "...the school is facing criticism for using generative AI to change the photo of a Hispanic male student into a nonexistent Black woman for a campus banner...Two classmates, an Asian woman and white man, remained in the new photo, which was…
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“Big corporate” and “college marketing office in the aughts” aren’t anywhere close to the same thing.
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Sometimes AI just changes things in pictures unwarranted, could be that's what happened and they shrugged their shoulders or didn't notice. Either way, it's fucking nuts they even did this at all.
- Sep 22
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Would be interesting to do this as a double blind study to evaluate bias in advertising
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There was an episode of Scrubs where Turk (Black Male Doctor) is annoyed about always being used in advertisements for everything he was in. They had a gag where his college had him copy and pasted twice in the same picture of an advertisement.
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Escalate this all the way up to the president of Stanford. Falsifying images is a disreputable act such a prestigious institution will not tolerate.
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The change of the peoples faces might just be an artifact of nano banana regenerating the image.I have done similar things and it sometimes changes the apperance of the people in the image. They might have also wanted to change the pullover of the guy wearing GAP.And honestly targetgroup research should have happened before the photograph was…
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Throwback to when Microsoft swapped a black guy out for a white guy in an ad meant for Poland:
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Marketing is about attracting customers.So the incentives are there to present the image you want to project to attract customers.