Stanford University is facing backlash after its housing and dining division used artificial intelligence to alter student photographs for promotional materials, including race- and gender-swapping at least one student entirely.
Billy Ramirez, a junior at the elite Bay Area school, learned he had been replaced by a Black woman in a finished advertisement while driving back to campus from his hometown last week. A friend sent him side-by-side images comparing the original cafeteria photo to the final banner, and Ramirez told The Stanford Review he was “immediately baffled.”
“At first, I found it hilarious that they had used AI to completely change our appearances, including my race and gender. But after looking at the comparison, I was also upset because I don’t agree with Stanford making those choices about how we were represented,” he said.
Ramirez was one of several students originally photographed holding plates of food in a dining hall for the promotional material. Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises, which oversees housing and dining operations for the university’s more than 18,000 students, subsequently ran the images through AI modification. Two other students who appeared alongside Ramirez in the original photo had their faces visibly slimmed in the final version, according to before-and-after images obtained by the student-run newspaper.
“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,” Ramirez said.
The alterations represent a growing tension on college campuses between diversity marketing and authentic representation. Stanford, located in California’s Silicon Valley, has positioned itself at the forefront of AI development while its own administrative divisions deploy the technology in ways that have now drawn criticism from the very students depicted in its promotional materials.
The Stanford Review, the conservative-leaning student publication that broke the story, published the unaltered original photograph alongside the AI-modified banner. The visual comparison shows Ramirez, a white male student, replaced entirely by a generated image of a Black woman in the same pose and setting. The other students in the frame retained their positions but with noticeably narrowed facial features.
SR&DE has not issued a public statement addressing the specific modifications or explaining the decision-making process that led to the AI alterations. The division manages residential life and dining hall operations across Stanford’s sprawling campus.
The incident follows broader national scrutiny of how institutions use artificial intelligence and digital manipulation in marketing materials, particularly when such tools are deployed to create the appearance of demographic diversity rather than reflecting actual community composition.
Ramirez’s comments to the student newspaper mark the first public response from any of the affected students, and his account has since circulated widely across social media platforms.