By Rajwa Quasim
As school picture day returns, some parents are finding a new way to avoid the cost of professional photography. Parents are using AI tools such as ChatGPT to create school-style portraits of their children at home using prompts.
The trend gained public attention on TikTok after a user shared how she photographed her three children and asked ChatGPT to turn the images into school-style photos. Carlie Bond used a plain background to take the photos and entered the prompt, “Keep them exactly the same but make it look like a school picture.” She tagged the post #MomHack.
Bond wrote in her caption, “School pictures x3 kids?? In this economy? So we took our own and let my good friend Chat help us out 🤭 And honestly … I’m not mad about how they turned out.”
One user commented, “Us moms about to put these school photo [companies] outta business.”
Another wrote, “This is so real. I have 4. It’s just under $170 for all four digital files.”
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The post also drew complaints from users who said AI tools sometimes alter people’s appearances. One commenter wrote, “Every time I put a photo into ChatGPT, it changes how the person looks no matter what I tell it.”
The cost of school photography is a major part of the trend’s appeal. Families can typically spend between $25 and $60 for a school photo package, while individual packages can cost considerably more depending on what is included. The expense can add up quickly for families with several children, with some commenters saying they had paid more than $100 for photos of multiple children.
Some parents are taking the trend further by using AI to remove watermarks from professional photographs they have not purchased.
But the practice carries a different set of risks, particularly as AI image-generation technology continues to develop. Removing watermarks from professional photographs can raise copyright concerns and, depending on the circumstances, could constitute copyright infringement.
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Under U.S. copyright law, statutory damages can range from $750 to $30,000 per infringed work, and up to $150,000 for willful infringement in certain cases.
Privacy is another concern. When parents photograph their children and upload the images to an AI platform, they are sharing their children’s faces and likenesses with an external technology service. Depending on the platform’s policies, those images may be processed or retained for various purposes.
One commenter raised similar privacy concerns, writing, “You are putting your children’s image and likeness through AI that can be utilized by AI later and stored in its memory.”
The use of AI for school portraits therefore reflects a broader trade-off: families can potentially save money and time, but they may also face questions about image accuracy, copyright and the privacy of children’s photos.