I am not a big fan of gen ai, but freak outs about nothingness detract from the real issues. I would be more concerned if they swapped the 3 students into a background or setting they were never in, than use the public setting and swap out the students for ai models.

Edit: please stop saying I didn't read the article. The article is almost exclusively opinion based on the observers reaction. "Slimmed down" is what I an saying is anonymized. As I also said, they put letting on top, so it is a tiny tile in a much larger piece. No problem if people don't agree, but the contention the article gives a lot of info and supporting claims is not true. We only really learn Stanford took the photo from the article, the rest of the conclusions are drawn from the 2 pics

To downvoters: I AM NOT saying there should be less diversity. I am saying that fake and dishonest diversity is just as harmful as any other kind of discrimination. Instead of helping the problem it just creates an alternate version.

This is totally self-inflicted.

So the incentives are there to present the image you want to project to attract customers.

So, you fill your university marketing and publication department with people who think this is ok and this is the sort of PR faux-pas whoopsie you get.

I'm sympathetic to the argument that this sort of marketing material needs as many races represented as possible so as many people as possible can see it and see someone that looks like them and identify with it but something tells me the university isn't gonna come out and own it like that and even then using AI to make a replacement when you have a student body to pull from is kind of icky.

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 taken. Not in post... but hey that was the big promise of genrative models right? The thing is, the marketing department could have posed in their office holding staplers and notepads and then asked the model to recreate the image as well. to even save the cost for the photographer...

Sure, it’s stupid to be so lazy that you can’t use a new photo with whatever characteristics you want. It’s also stupid to slim down a chubby student without permission. I think she has more reason to be upset than he has. That said why does the university see the need to alter reality?