Controversy over AI photo editing at Stanford University: Latino male college students were replaced with black women

Stanford University, a well-known institution of higher learning near Silicon Valley, California, has recently exploded into controversy over the improper use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology to retouch photos. A photo taken with students a few years ago was recently used as a banner to welcome students back to school. The problem is that the Latino male college student standing on the far right in the original photo was actually retouched with AI technology and replaced with a black girl. The school said bluntly that this move violated school rules.

The victim who was inexplicably replaced was Billy Ramirez, a senior at U of T. When he was preparing to return to school on the 18th, he received a set of photos from a friend: one was a photo of Ramirez and two other people when he was a freshman, and the other was a welcome banner photo produced by the Department of Housing and Dining at U of T for this fall class. The problem is that the latter photo was obviously edited.

The original picture from that year was taken by a Shida photographer and released by the school. In the picture, Ramirez and two other students can be seen smiling and holding food. However, in this year's new picture, not only the other two students have become noticeably thinner, but Ramirez has also disappeared and been replaced by a black woman wearing a Shizu T-shirt.

"I was replaced," Ramirez said. "This makes me feel very uncomfortable."

As this AI-edited photo was shared on social media, and the story was first exposed by the Stanford Review, a student newspaper, the incident went viral on the Internet. Some people mistakenly thought that a white man had been replaced by a black woman. This made Ramirez, who was raised by a Mexican immigrant mother, find it even more strange and worried that powerful AI technology might erase part of history. "This is scary."

Ramirez said that if the old photos the school wants to use do not accurately reflect the current student body, it only means that the university needs to recruit students from underrepresented ethnic groups such as blacks and Latinos. According to data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as of October 2025, approximately 16% of undergraduate students are Hispanic or Latino, 6.5% are black, and 9% have two or more ethnic backgrounds.

The university confirmed that the original photo had been modified using AI technology, which violated school rules; the welcome banner has now been removed. ST's AI policy strictly prohibits the use of AI to create or modify images of ST personnel, activities, research, facilities, or achievements.

In addition to Ramirez, the other two students in the original picture were also dissatisfied. According to the Stanford Daily, the university's campus newspaper, the two students who did not want to be exposed have issued a statement demanding a formal apology from the school, an investigation into how the photo was produced and added to the "Welcome Back to Campus" banner, and a commitment to no longer use AI-generated student photos; one of them also reported discrimination to the school.