Stanford University Acknowledged Using AI to Alter Student Photo for Campus Banners, Replacing Hispanic Student With Black Woman

September 21, 2026

Stanford University acknowledged using AI to alter a 2024 student photograph for campus banners in September 2026. The altered image replaced Hispanic student Billy Ramirez with a Black woman and made two other students appear thinner. Billy Ramirez said being "erased" was upsetting and frustrating. Stanford said the alteration and lack of disclosure violated its AI policy and later said it was removing the banners…through contributors—JOIN US—to learn more.

Alleged deployer

stanford-university, universities, educational-communities, synthetic-media-creators, stanford-residential-and-dining-enterprises

Alleged developer

synthetic-image-generation-technology-developers, synthetic-media-generation-technology-developers

Alleged harmed parties

billy-ramirez, university-students, students, educational-communities, two-unnamed-stanford-university-students-whose-appearances-were-altered, epistemic-integrity, privacy

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Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

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