Stanford ad campaign allegedly used AI to alter students' race, gender and appearance
A conservative campus paper claims Stanford's dining services used artificial intelligence to replace a male student with an AI-generated Black woman and thin the bodies of nearby students in a promotional banner.
According to the conservative student newspaper The Stanford Review, Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises employed artificial-intelligence software to modify a promotional banner featuring campus students. The AI allegedly erased sophomore Billy Ramirez from the original photograph and replaced him with a computer-generated Black woman, while also narrowing the figures of two students standing beside him. Ramirez recognized the original shot as taken by a university photographer and said a friend sent him the edited and original images for comparison, leaving him both amused and upset about the perceived identity alteration.
The altered banner generated thousands of comments on the anonymous student platform Fizz, where the Review posted before-and-after images. The story references a historic 2000 incident at the University of Wisconsin-Madison involving a similar image manipulation. Stanford has not publicly addressed the claims, and the university has not confirmed the edits.
Why it matters
It raises questions about AI use in campus marketing and the handling of student identity representation.
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