Before You Upload Your Child's Photo to AI

Originally written in Traditional Chinese: 上傳孩子的照片之前，最該問的不是好不好看，是他長大以後會不會同意

My take: before you upload your child's photo to AI, the question is not whether it will look good. It is whether they would agree when they grow up.

In early October, US and UK outlets reported a new money-saving trend. Parents stand their kids against a plain wall, take a photo at home, and ask ChatGPT to keep the child exactly the same but make it look like a school picture. According to Futurism, citing Fast Company, US school photo packages typically cost about $25 to $60 per child, and some parents used AI to remove watermarks from proof images.

In the UK, The Week reported that nearly 60% of school photographers in an Association of Photographers survey said they had lost commissioned work to AI.

I understand these parents. School photos are expensive, and they come every year. But what stayed with me was not the money saved. It was where that photo goes next.

Attorney Daliah Saper, quoted by USA Today, described it as seeding your child's image into a large language model, with no way to know how it might be manipulated. Gadget Review warned that a child's eyes, facial proportions, or hairline can quietly change during generation. The photo may no longer be fully your child, and once uploaded, it may not come back.

It's not about how good the picture looks. It's about whether your child would say yes.

In my course on learning with AI, I teach two questions for deciding whether a task should go to AI at all. If something goes wrong, can I take responsibility? If the people involved knew AI was used, would they agree? Here, the person involved is the child, who often has not yet had the chance to say no.

To be clear, I am not saying a child's photo can never touch AI. And I am not saying parents who want to save money love their kids any less. I am asking for five seconds before you press upload.

Three things you can do today:

  1. Check your data controls. In ChatGPT settings, find "Improve the model for everyone" and see whether it is on.
  2. Remember that off does not mean gone. OpenAI says Temporary Chats are not used to improve its models but may be kept for up to 30 days for safety. The safest photo is the one you never uploaded.
  3. Ask your child. If they are old enough: "Can I give this photo to AI?" If they say no, the answer is no.

For educators: before class photos go into an AI editor, ask whether parents know. For professionals: a colleague's photo or a client's data deserves the same question.

A child smiling in front of a plain wall does not know where the photo will go. They only trust the person holding the phone. That trust deserves more care than any school portrait.

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