It’s extraordinarily depressing to hear about parents choosing to create AI school pictures of their kids rather than paying the relatively small sums required for a professional photographer to take a photo of a kid’s face. Some parents would rather create a synthetic memory than a real one, which makes me question how much they actually like their children.According to Fast Company, penny-pinching parents are bragging on various social media platforms, including TikTok, about skipping classic school photo print packages and instead asking ChatGPT to turn a picture of their child against a blank wall into a classic school picture. Complete with the dull background gradient and all.This is all to save anywhere between $ 25 and $60 on a school photo package, and probably to make parents feel clever for sidestepping a traditional photo and instead making their children accomplices in fabricating reality.Parents Are Using ChatGPT to Avoid Paying for School PhotosSome are reportedly taking it even further, and sketchier, by using AI to erase watermarks from official proof photos so they can steal the high-res digital files without paying a cent for the final package of printed pics. Copyright infringement, in other words. And not a major corporation, which makes it somewhat justifiable, but a local photo studio that employs people trying to survive in your town. If one of those photo studios decides to sue, fines can range from as low as $750 to as high as $150,000, according to figures Fast Company dug up. Either way, you’re paying significantly more for school pictures than you would have if you just bought the darn package in the first place.The post Parents Are Using AI to Fake Their Kids’ School Photos (And Bragging About It) appeared first on VICE.