Stanford R&DE Uses AI to Race Swap Students for Advertising

Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises used generative AI to alter photographs for its advertising, swapping students’ races and genders, removing a student from an image and replacing him with an AI-generated Black woman, and noticeably slimming and distorting other students’ faces. One affected student, Billy Ramirez ’27, discovered his removal while en route to campus and described feeling “silenced and erased” by having his identity changed; two peers to his right were rendered visibly thinner in the edited banner. The manipulated image circulated widely on campus social platforms and drew thousands of reactions, mixing amusement with genuine upset among students who compared the original and edited photos.

The incident is presented as more than a technical gaffe: it is framed as evidence of lingering ideological and racial preferences within university bureaucracy, an attempt to recast campus representation through AI rather than by including diverse students authentically. The edits are criticized as a deliberate choice rather than an innocuous tool error, and the campus community’s swift detection is credited for exposing the practice. Observers promise continued scrutiny of Residential & Dining Enterprises’ future advertising as the office learns to use generative AI.