The Onion already covered this 26 years ago: https://theonion.com/black-guy-photoshopped-in-1819565862/
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2026
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Holy shit that's exactly the story. Satire is truly dead
The oracle foretold*
i was like no way the onion talked about photoshop 26 years ago! 2000 was 26 years ago.... shit
Hi I'm 26
Somehow it was still less bad:
Each black guy you see in this catalog was, in fact, photographed at one point.
Of course there are no consequences imposed by Stanford upon Stanford for its inappropriate behavior. If a student lied like Stanford did here there would be consequences.
“Stanford student Billy Ramirez, a member of the class of 2027, told the publication that he remembered posing for the original photo, only to discover that he had been replaced by an AI-generated Black woman."
It is worth remembering that AI replaces the ENTIRE image, even if you ask it to change only one thing. That's why every single person in the image looks different.
The Asian girl and the white dude both got mildly more attractive. But Billy got that glow up!
Everyday I am more astounded at how well transracial people are passing!
Rachel Dolezal walked so that they could run.
Or something.
The middle dude is a mash-up of the two guys in the original. One face and one hair.
If that is in fact how the system in question works. There are systems which allow you to edit regions, like Affinity
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As someone else pointed out, there are systems where you can isolate and replace only a portion of the image while leaving the rest unchanged, but you're correct in this case, as you point out in your last sentence.
This sort of system takes the input image which it blurs and adds noise, and then regenerates from that rather than an initial pure-noise seed. You can mask or add more noise to the areas that you want and more dramatic change. Whole image-to-image diffusion; mostly uses the same mechanisms as a regular text-to-image diffusion.
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They merged the two white guys...
Added a black woman...
And took like 20lbs off the Asian woman. Its shitty, but I don't understand why it's news outside of Stanford.
Reminds me of something Dean Pelton would do tho.
Because it gives magats another excuse to shit on dei and continue promoting actual racism.
I have to say it's a stupid fucking move by Stanford too.
Maybe Pierce would’ve done it for marketing class and said something misogynistic about making the Asian woman thinner
If the camera adds 10 pounds then it's basically break even.
The camera doesn't shorten that neck extension that the Asian girl got, though!
You don't understand why it's news outside Stanford...
What a time to be alive
Also why is no one talking about the fact that they made the young women skinnier. Young women already feel have unrealistic expectations without AI in the mix.
It's in the first paragraph.
Stanford University acknowledged Tuesday that artificial intelligence was used to alter a photograph of three students for promotional materials, replacing a male student with a Black woman and making another student appear thinner
I agree they effectively replaced the woman too, and gave the guy in the middle a haircut, cheek bone enhancements, eyebrow grooming and a bigger smile 😬
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They actually changed all of them. It's kind of odd that they even photographed anyone at all?
It's not new. Once it became possible to shop hi-res photographs, it became standard to narrow fashion models slightly in order to make them look even thinner.
I learned about it from documentaries intended to highlight the unrealistic appearance expectations that are driven by media.
...why? What happened to copy-pasting random black people in with Photoshop like the good old days?
Also gender swap
And sweater swap.
The second most obvious thing is that they made the ones allowed to stay in the photo more attractive.
I'd be a little weirded out if I see a more attractive version of me (but not really me)in a photo.
None of the people in the "edited" picture are the same. Why even pretend to start with a real picture if you are going to replace everyone in it? Here's an even crazier idea, if you are so controlling over your marketing materials, hire people to model your sweaters and do a proper photo shoot in the cafeteria...
When I see conservative political or ideological ads with black people, I assume they're (desperate) actors, but AI works too.
I like how the AI also changed his shirt and removed the guy's headphones
No: AI Acceptable: Photoshop Great: GIMP/Krita
Somebody hasn’t used photoshop in a while.
I think photoshop is like a weedeater. I photoshop things in Krita and GIMP, but I’d never GIMP or Krita things in Photoshop. I think that’s illegal in a couple states…
I'm sure right-wing publications will be having a field day with this.
There's already a nytimes piece, so, absolutely they are
Really going to trigger the "replacement theory" morons.
Why did they also crop above and below the middle guy's head?
I'm guessing it's large text over a collage of images and we're only seeing a closeup of the edited photo
The specter of unaddressed racism has emerged from it's burrow, saw this vaguely well meaning body shaming tokenism and predicated at least two more years of explicitly and eager racist fascism.
This probably well intending, but outlandishly naive, racist, virtue signaling shit places every non-straight white male in danger. No one asked for this ridiculous fake representation, but it will be sharpened into the dagger that kills us.
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