Stanford pulls a dining-hall banner after an AI edit replaced a student
Residential and Dining Enterprises replaced Billy Ramirez in a dining-hall photograph with an AI-generated image of a woman, and also changed his classmates' faces and clothes. Stanford said the edit and the missing disclosure broke university rules. The banner came down. Ramirez said the change made him feel erased, and the other two students filed a civil-rights report seeking an apology and a ban on AI images of students.
Artificial Intelligence··Morning
The banner that erased Ramirez
Residential and Dining Enterprises put an altered dining-hall frame on a campus banner. TheGrio reported that the original shows Billy Ramirez and two classmates holding plates. In the version that went up, Ramirez is gone and an AI-generated image of a Black woman stands in his place. The other students' faces and clothes were changed as well. Stanford said the alteration, and the failure to say it had been made, broke university policy. The banner came down.[1], [2]
What the students asked the university to do
Ramirez told AfroTech, in the account TheGrio published, that having his identity changed and being left out of the picture made him feel erased. NBC News carried a student saying that seeing himself erased so easily was upsetting. The other two students said in a statement that they were embarrassed by changes to their ethnic facial features. They filed a report under Title VI, the federal civil-rights provision that covers discrimination in federally funded education. They want a public apology, an investigation, and a prohibition on AI-generated images of students. Those demands are theirs. Stanford has not, in these accounts, granted them.[1], [2]
The training Stanford says it will add
Stanford said it is adding staff training and a further review of materials so a similar banner is not printed again. NBC News reported the university's statement that the altered photograph violated its policy on the use of AI. The policy breach and the missing disclosure are the findings the university itself stated, not a judgment added from outside the two reports. The dining-hall banner had shown a student. An automated edit replaced that student, and the university took the banner down and apologized. NBC News reported the apology and the change to the student's appearance in the picture. TheGrio reported the same removal. The magnitude is one banner and one altered photograph, not a campus-wide portrait program. The antecedent is the edit itself: the picture that hung in the hall was not the picture that was taken.[1], [2]
