Stanford University has stoked another controversy with an image made by artificial intelligence.
Last week members of the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band called the university out for posting an all-white and all-male image of the group generated by AI. The image, which was first reported by The Stanford Daily, was included on a page for the university’s Campus Center Construction Project and prominently featured the band.
Band members lambasted university officials in an email, which the student newspaper obtained, that accused them of creating an “all-white, all-male, AI slop version of the Band” and questioned why they didn’t use an existing image. Band members told The Stanford Daily they worried the AI depiction could hurt efforts to recruit women and students of color.
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The image also raises questions about whether Stanford violated its own AI guidelines, which prohibit the creation of content that “depicts, impersonates, or closely resembles a real person.”
Stanford subsequently deleted the image but defended its use. Stanford spokesperson Mindi Bach sent a response to Inside Higher Ed that was also shared with the student newspaper but attributed to another official.
“As is standard with construction and design projects, the Campus Center website is illustrated with artist renderings to show the vision for the reimagined center of campus. AI-assisted imagery is standard industry practice for architectural visualization,” Bach wrote by email. “The figures in these renderings are illustrative and not intended to depict real individuals.”
She noted the website language has been updated to clarify that the images “are conceptual renderings intended to illustrate the vision for a design and construction project that is still in progress.”
This is the second AI image controversy for the university in the span of a month. Stanford Residential and Dining Enterprises previously used AI to edit a photograph of students, removing a Hispanic man and adding a Black woman. Stanford officials admitted in that case that the university had violated its AI guidelines.