Student: Stanford 'Erased' Me in AI-Altered Photo

Stanford is under fire for quietly swapping a real student's face with an AI-generated one on a campus banner, breaking its own rules in the process. Human biology major Billy Ramirez, a Hispanic man, tells the Stanford Review he was "baffled" to see his image, which originally showed him holding a dish of noodles in a dining hall, turned into an invented Black woman and used on "Welcome Home" signs across campus, as described by the San Francisco Chronicle. Two classmates in the shot, an Asian woman and a white man, also appeared digitally slimmed (check out the two photos next to each other here).

"I thought that maybe they merged me with the guy in the middle, but I was like, 'Oh, no, they actually replaced me,'" Ramirez tells the Stanford Daily. A university spokesperson admits that the edit violated Stanford's AI policy, which bans using AI to produce or alter images of campus people or events and requires disclosure, per the Chronicle.

The school says it's adding staff training and an enhanced review process, but Ramirez says no one has reached out to him personally. He argues that the altered banner misrepresents Stanford's diversity. "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," he tells the Review.