According to a conservative campus newspaper, Stanford University manipulated a student’s race and gender using artificial intelligence to enhance promotional imagery. The Stanford Review reported that the school’s Residential & Dining Enterprises had altered advertising photos, including replacing one student with an AI-generated image of a Black woman.
This student, sophomore Billy Ramirez, recognized the photo as one taken by a Stanford photographer. A friend shared the edited banner with him while he was on his way to campus. “I was driving to school from my hometown when my friend sent me the images comparing the banner to the original photos, and I was immediately baffled. At first, I found it hilarious that they had used AI to completely change our appearances, including my race and gender,” Ramirez expressed.
Stanford just used AI to race swap a student for their advertisements. pic.twitter.com/xXjixdIyjU
— The Stanford Review (@StanfordReview) September 21, 2026
However, he also felt upset upon realizing how Stanford had chosen to represent him: “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 added.
The alterations were not limited to Ramirez. The Review noted that two students next to him were also edited to appear significantly thinner. This modified banner sparked substantial reactions on Fizz, an anonymous app popular among college students, where side-by-side images revealing the edits were shared.
Founded by Peter Thiel in 1987, The Review framed this incident as indicative of the university’s ongoing preoccupation with identity politics.
A historical reference made by Snopes highlighted a similar incident at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000. That university altered an admissions booklet cover to insert a Black student, Diallo Shabazz, into a sea of white spectators at a football game from 1993. A student journalist discovered the manipulation when they noticed that Shabazz’s face was uniquely lit, leading to the school incurring about $64,000 in costs to reprint 100,000 copies.
Shabazz, who had not even attended that game, remarked in a 2013 NPR interview, “So I flipped back, and that’s when I saw my head cut off and kind of pasted onto the front cover of the admissions booklet.”
As of now, Stanford has not issued a public statement regarding The Review’s claims, leaving the situation unresolved on their part.
