Why shell out for the mundane headshots by a school photographer when you could supercharge your kids’ portrait with the power of AI?
That’s a calculation more and more parents are making these days, choosing to tap into generative AI tools like ChatGPT to fast-track school picture day. According to Fast Company, parents are taking to social media to brag up how much AI saved them on their children’s’ school print package — usually in the range of $25 to $60 per.
One TikTok from influencer Carlie Bond showed off the hack: first, parents take some phone pictures of their children standing in front of a plain-colored wall, before tossing them into ChatGPT with the prompt “keep them exactly the same but make it look like a school picture.”
ChatGPT then adds a milquetoast background, reminiscent of school photos taken by typical bulk-photo companies like Lifetouch.
“We took our own and let my good friend Chat help us out,” Bond bragged, “and honestly… I’m not mad about how they turned out.”
“ChatGPT for the win,” one TikTok user replied.
Other parents observed by FastCo used AI to “remove” watermarks from scans of sample school photos, which they’d otherwise have to pay to clean up.
Of course, both use cases involve feeding a likeness of your child to a corporate AI model, where the images which will surely be used to train the next iteration of AI tools. Simply put, once a parent uploads those images, they’ll never get them back. Given the ethical and privacy risks involved, parents trying to save a buck on school photos might be wise to just take the pictures themselves, and leave ChatGPT behind.
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