Going to school in Silicon Valley, artificial intelligence is everywhere, Stanford University senior Billy Ramirez said. But he never expected to be deleted by it.
On his way back to school Friday, a friend sent him a photo that had been taken his freshman year, along with an altered version of the photo that was displayed on a banner on campus this fall.
In the original photo, taken by a university photographer and promoted by the school, Ramirez and two other students are smiling, holding plates of food. In the new version, the other two students look slimmer, different. And Ramirez is gone, the space filled by an image of a Black woman in a Stanford sweatshirt.
“I was replaced,” Ramirez said. “And that to me is very upsetting.”
As the photo, shared on social media and first reported by the Stanford Review, began to go viral, some people characterized it as a White man being swapped out for a Black woman. That felt even weirder to Ramirez, a first-generation Hispanic student who was raised by a single mother who emigrated from Mexico.
Stanford University officials confirmed that AI was used to alter the photo, in violation of the school’s policy. The banners have been removed.
The school’s AI policy strictly prohibits the use of AI in producing or altering images of Stanford people, events, research, facilities or achievements, spokeswoman Angie Davis wrote in an email Tuesday. “Both the alteration and lack of disclosure in this case violate that policy. We are working to provide additional training for all staff and ensure proper review of all materials,” she said.
Ramirez said he hoped for some changes. “If you’re trying to use years-old photos that aren’t even accurate of the student body, then it just shows that Stanford needs to increase the enrollment of students from historically underrepresented backgrounds like Black and Hispanic students,” he said.
About 16 percent of undergraduates in October 2025 were Hispanic or Latino, according to the university’s most recent Common Data Set, 6.5 percent were Black and 9 percent were two or more races.
The topic of race on college campuses has been at the center of new tension since President Donald Trump’s second term began.
Stanford, like many schools, is under pressure from the Trump administration to comply with the government’s interpretation of civil rights law following a 2023 Supreme Court ruling banning race-conscious admissions. The Justice Department is investigating whether the university’s medical school discriminated when selecting students for admission. The Trump administration has accused several schools of discriminating against White and Asian applicants in favor of Black and Hispanic ones.
On Thursday, the Stanford Daily reported that it had verified a statement from the other two students in the photo, who wished to remain anonymous, but said one of them had reported a discrimination claim to the university on Sunday. They called for a formal apology from the university and an investigation into how the image was created and added to “Welcome Home” banners. They asked for a commitment to not use AI-generated student photos, and “increased efforts to reinstate DEI initiatives.”
For Ramirez, the use of AI in the photo was especially troubling. He sees how powerful AI can be in many settings, such as extending the reach of under-resourced medical clinics, and driving pharmaceutical advances. But the photo was unsettling, in part because it could so easily have gone unnoticed, he said.
“It’s kind of like how some parts of history could be erased with AI,” Ramirez said. “It’s scary.”
It seemed like the only thing people were talking about in his first days of classes this week, and it blew up online to the point that he hasn’t even unpacked his move-in boxes yet. That made him worried that the reaction to the photo would overshadow his real identity.
He has had a great, impactful experience at Stanford, he said, studying human biology, helping people in Oaxaca and West Africa, traveling to Chile and working on Capitol Hill as a congressional intern. He plans to get a master’s degree in public health and wants to help marginalized communities like the predominantly Mexican neighborhoods of East Los Angeles.
“I’m more than just ‘that AI guy,’” Ramirez said.
Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report.
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