Stanford R&DE Used AI to Race-Swap Students in Ads, and One Student Says He Was Erased
Stanford R&DE Uses AI to Race Swap Students for Advertising
Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises used AI to alter the races, genders, and body shapes of students in its advertising. Billy Ramirez '27 discovered he had been removed from a campus photo and replaced by an AI-generated Black woman, while two other students were made to appear thinner. Ramirez told the Stanford Review he felt silenced and erased by the changes.
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.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c
Throwback to when Microsoft swapped a black guy out for a white guy in an ad meant for Poland: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/aug/26/microsoft...
- ecshafer
There was an episode of Scrubs where Turk (Black Male Doctor) is annoyed about always being used in advertisements for everything he was in. They had a gag where his college had him copy and pasted twice in the same picture of an advertisement.
- peri-cl
Escalate this all the way up to the president of Stanford. Falsifying images is a disreputable act such a prestigious institution will not tolerate.
- rahimnathwani
Life imitates art: https://theonion.com/black-guy-photoshopped-in-1819565862/
- andsoitis
Marketing is about attracting customers.
So the incentives are there to present the image you want to project to attract customers.