Billy Ramirez, a Stanford senior surrounded by Silicon Valley’s AI culture, did not expect the technology to remove him from his own campus. On his return to school on Friday, a friend sent him the original 2024 dining-hall photograph and the altered version later displayed on a campus banner. The swap turned the Hispanic student into a fictional Black woman.¹

The image had been used to promote Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises and appeared on “Welcome Home” banners across campus. Ramirez’s two classmates — an Asian woman and a white man — remained in the scene, though their faces also appeared to have been modified. Ramirez said he was “baffled” before concluding that he had been “silenced and erased from a representation that was supposed to include me.”²

As the image spread on campus and through the student network Fizz, the banners began coming down. Ramirez said the display was impossible to miss: “It’s all over campus. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in.”² He said Stanford officials had not contacted or apologized to him.

Stanford ultimately agreed that the alteration crossed a clear line. Spokesperson Charlene Gage said the university had confirmed AI was used “in violation of university policy,” which strictly prohibits using AI to create or alter images of Stanford people, events, research, facilities or achievements. The university also said the failure to disclose the manipulation violated policy and that staff would receive additional training.²

For Ramirez, however, removing the banners does not resolve the wider issue. He said the invented Black student did not “reflect reality,” adding: “It’s not as diverse as they make it out to be.”² Stanford frames the episode as a policy breach requiring correction; Ramirez sees a more pointed lesson about who gets edited out when institutions use AI to sell inclusion.