Parents Are Using AI to Create Their Kids’ School Photos Instead of Paying Photographers

Parents are increasingly turning to AI to create their children’s school photos or remove watermarks from existing images to avoid paying photographers.

The trend is raising concerns among professional photographers about the impact of AI on their businesses, according to numerous reports.

According to Fast Company, some parents have taken to social media to share how much money they have saved by using AI instead of paying for their children’s school photos, which can cost between $25 and $60 for a print package.

@carlieb0nd 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 😂 #SchoolPictures #MomHack #MomOfFour #ChatGPT #MomLife ♬ Bow Bow Bow – Zeddy Will

TikTok user Carlie Bond went viral after describing what she called a “Mom Hack” for saving money on professional school photos. Bond showed how she photographed three school-age children against a plain backdrop and then uploaded the images to ChatGPT with the prompt: “Keep them exactly the same but make it look like a school picture.”

ChatGPT then added a standard gradient backdrop to Bond’s photographs, giving them a style similar to school portraits offered by major companies such as Lifetouch and Cady Studios.

The trend is also being reported in the U.K. The Times of London found that school photographers there have seen orders fall as parents use AI tools to remove watermarks from their photographs.

“We have seen a slight decrease in sales through parents wanting to save £12 and put photos into tools like ChatGPT to remove our logo,” says Lee Brooker, a school photographer for two decades and author of The School Photography Business Handbook.

“My bigger worry is that they are uploading the images of their children into Facebook groups asking people around the world to remove them. We spend thousands of pounds a year to protect these photos and to put them in an AI tool or on a social media group can put children at risk.”

‘I Don’t Believe the Public Realize the Consequences’

According to The Times of London, data from the Association of Photographers (AOP), a trade association representing about 3,000 U.K. photographers and assistants, shows that 58 percent of its members have lost commissioned work to AI. More than two-thirds have also experienced copyright infringement online.

While school photographers are among those most affected, photographers working in weddings, baby portraits and commercial work have also encountered similar problems when clients have not secured a license to use an image.

“There have always been software tools or hacks that remove watermarks from images but they aren’t always accessible to people without IT skills,” Isabelle Doran, the chief executive of AOP, tells the news outlet.”The introduction of AI-assisted watermark removal is at another level, which makes it even harder for professional visual artists such as photographers to protect their work and their livelihoods.”

She adds: “I don’t believe the public realize the consequences. There’s something about the scale and anonymity of online activity which seems to enable illegal activity which might appear harmless but in fact does real harm to creative livelihoods.”

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