‘Grandmaslop’ is Bizarre AI Imagery of Kids Made by Baby Boomers

It’s not quite Halloween yet. But people are getting freaked out by their parents’ and grandparents’ penchant for AI images of loved ones.

Dubbed “Grandmaslop,” it refers to videos and photos that have been created with an AI model. To make them, actual photos of the children have to be fed into the AI, leading to concerns that they might end up being used for other purposes, even nefarious ones.

“I found out my grandma was making AI photos of one of her grandsons and her recently born granddaughter, and I immediately let her know how disturbing and weird I found this to be, only because these two kids in particular have never met in real life yet,” one Reddit user says on a thread discussing the phenomenon.

“And these AI images showed them playing in a park together and other scenes that NEVER happened! And I said, ‘What if you get older and can’t trust your memory as much, and you think this photo is real? What if you believed this moment actually took place in reality even though it didn’t?’ Not to mention it was some app she was using that was generating the images, so she submitted photos of her grandchildren without the parent’s permission to this random company doing God knows what with that data…”

One Redditor who says they work at a print lab says, “they are printing them out, a lot of them.”

Another person says they were at a birthday party and the kid was opening presents and received a framed picture of themselves standing with a famous boy band.

“The child was in awe and asked their mom when that picture was taken because they (child) couldn’t remember meeting the band,” the Redditor says.

“Everyone laughed in amusement but I know that kid is going to remember that moment forever and feel cheated.”

The conversation started after a Business Insider article that took a closer look at the strange new trend.

It found that Millennial parents are often very uncomfortable that their parents or grandparents are making AI images with their child’s likeness.

One mom tells Business Insider that they worry about how her children’s faces might be used in the future. While another, who doesn’t want her mom sharing photos of her kid on social media, says that her mom doesn’t understand her reticence.

“We’re on totally different pages,” Leah, whose name was changed for the article, says. “I haven’t figured out a way to bridge the gap. It’s almost like neither of us has a place where we can compromise.”

Millennials and Gen Z are much more alert to the fact that once your image is out on the internet, anything can happen to it.

“I would hope that there’s a way in the future to legally fight that and permanently remove your biometric data,” another person, Brandon, tells Business Insider.