Using AI to remove school photo watermarks

Goodness me, you are absolutely clueless.

In todays toxic digital environment no kids photos should be put online. That includes submitting photos to AI apps.

then tell the people who want one that if they want one, they must pay for it.

I’m genuinely shocked that you’re completely unaware of this risk.

When the work is as shit as the photographer that my daughter's school use then do it. I aren't buying the crap they passed off for a photo! Three of them too!

The watermarked copy our school gives us has about 12 pixels. Soon photographers will only share barely visible copies of the pics.

If people continue then the photographers won't be a le to earn a living and will go out of business. Eventually there won't be anyone to take the photos! I imagine mamy photographers are looking at options to get around this, there probably is a way they can do it.

The companies know this is happening. There will be changes soon enough.

absolutely spot on. those parents must be thick as shit

I was at the park with some school mums the day we got the photos with the watermark on. They were all trying to remove the watermark and none of the AI they were using would do it, so I’m not sure I even believe it

dumb comment

Jeremy Vine had a segment on this last week on his radio 2 show. I was shocked to hear how common it is. The consensus seemed to be that it's a dying business.

They look crap compared to candid photos. Scruffy hair and clothes. Don’t bother to adjust anything. I’ve kept the reception ones but that’s it. But I wouldn’t steal them and adjust them using AI

Not saying it’s right but one digital photo is £15 at DDs school with print bundles a lot more. It’s a huge amount for a photo so can see why people do it. Photographers need to come up with a better model, charging to have the photos done maybe then a small amount for the actual photos, which puts the cost on to the actual photo taking.

I am not sure about chat GPT but a lot of the AI models have been used by people who "jailbreak" them and get them to create child porn. Jailbreak is just a fancy term for getting around the restrictions put on AI models to stop them from doing stuff they are not supposed to.

In order to create an image/video of e.g. Will Smith eating a plate of spaghetti AI needs lots of pictures of Will Smith and lots of images of people eating spaghetti so that it can reconstruct, pixel by pixel, a realistic "original" video.

In order to be able to create CSE, the allegations are that models such as Grok will have had to have had vast amounts of actual CSE fed into their trainibg data. So that suggests at some point someone believes that to be a legitimate use. And if you feed images of your child in school uniform into the AI training data that image will also help inform any images it makes of (eg) blonde 8 year old girl.

The whole thing is creepy and weird.

Why don't you get your "friend who works in photography" to take a picture of your kid in uniform rather than both of you stealing one off someone else?

Yes any large school Inc all secondaries really needs the images for ID purposes, so I can’t see them not being taken. Unless sch employed someone in a freelance basis to photograph 1,500 students in a day.

Not directly, no. But OpenAI agents have leaked user photos to the internet.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/25/unsecured-openai-agents-posted-53-user-images-on-the-internet-without-the-labs-knowledge/

I’m pretty sure these photos are also given free to the school for purposes such as a missing child

I send them to my friend who works in photography and he fixes them for me and cleans the mess off their faces etc.

Then I get them ordered online.

I have 3 children and I think the cheapest option this year was £11.99 for one print off. And my daughter wasn't even wearing her cardigan properly

It sucks but when you have multiple people who want one, me, dad, nan, great nan and a bundle is £20+ per child, I don't have that money.

I haven’t bought a school photo in ten years, I pass the link to grandparents and they can buy one should they wish. It just seems an INSANE amount of money when we nearly all have very high quality cameras in our pockets.

Its outdated and has fallen out of fashion for there to be a school picture, I can take much more candid and natural pictures that I adore for a fraction of the cost.

I do feel sorry for businesses who are suffering but it’s time to diversify, steeling is never a good look though, I find school pictures awful and cold looking. My child always looks so awkward. So can’t imagine why anyone would want to steal one anyway!

I would buy some candid shots of my child playing with his mates in school, or concentrating in a lesson etc, an awkward headshot under harsh lighting no thank you. He would also hate that too!

It's a really shitty thing to do.

You're stealing from a small business, not a big company - I'd consider it a real low tbh and think it really shows up the parents that do this. If you do this, grow up.

I only buy school photos now and then tbh. Not sure about having them every year, we actually get lots of photos of them and their class at the end of the year in their workbooks.

Why are you sure about that? I work on AI tech projects and you're absolutely incorrect. Once you've uploaded a photo of your child to AI you have no guarantee on how it will be used in the future. Your ignorance is pretty obnoxious.

I would never upload a photo of my child to AI precisely because I do know how it is being used.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crpdgz2nqe59o

I tried this just to see what would happen on an awful photo I would never want nor would I pay for it. It stated they couldn’t do that and AI wouldn’t remove the water mark so no idea how other people are actually doing this. It doesn’t seem right and I feel for photography with the move into digital

You need to do some reading up on the capabilities of AI.