Stanford recently did something with AI that made students question themselves. Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises took a picture from a student and than used AI to race swap people in the picture.

On his journey to campus, Stanford student Billy Ramirez ’27 was sent an image he recalled a Stanford photographer taking. Upon closer examination, he noticed that he had been removed from the photo and replaced by a AI-generated black woman.

Billy got back to the futured by AI by the school and was removed from the picture he remembered he was in. This is funny because all schools have the mantra of “Do not use AI OR ELSE”.

Ramirez, who stated, “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. But after looking at the comparison, I was also upset because I don’t agree with Stanford making those choices about how we were represented. Seeing my identity changed and being left out of the picture made me feel, in a way, silenced and erased from a representation that was supposed to include me.”

Billy may be White, but according to every standard code of conduct a school operates under, they missed big here.

From the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (race, color, national origin), Title IX (sex), and specific state/university education codes.
Shall not on the basis of race, color, creed, sex, national origin, marital status, political or religious beliefs, family, social or cultural background, or sexual orientation, unfairly–
a:Exclude any student from participation in any program
b:Deny benefits to any student
c:Grant any advantage to any student

As silly as it may be Billy should be going to the title 9 office and making some noise, you do not just take a picture of someone than turn around with AI and race swap him out to a fake human. Stanford has photography classes. They could of pulled any number of real students to take the same photo again and had real people and real race inclusion but no they decided to just swap out Billy and swap in a hallucinated person who never went to Stanford.

Not only were Ramirez’s race and gender changed, but the two students to Ramirez’s right were distorted, making them appear visibly thinner. While this incident is humorous and generated thousands of reactions on Fizz, it offers an unsurprising insight into Stanford’s and its bureaucracy’s persisting ideological and racial preferences.

Stanford might want to tap their law professors at this point; while funny, they are walking into a legal buzzsaw if Billy or the other students object to their likenesses being manipulated.

In all this is the stupidest use of AI when they could have tapped any number of students to take a picture for R&DE and instead decided to blow a few KW of compute time to phase Billy out of this reality and made their own.

Attributions from:
Stanford Edu – Photography class listings
Stanford Review – Stanford R&DE Uses AI to Race Swap Students for Advertising
Wikipedia – Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964