Carlie Bond took a picture of each of her three kids against a plain wall. She uploaded the images to ChatGPT and asked it to turn them into school portraits. The result? A familiar gradient background.
“School pictures x3 kids?? In this economy?”
That’s the caption Bond posted on TikTok, where the trick has been circling through posts from parents who want to skip the photographer entirely.
How Parents Are Using ChatGPT For School Photos
The idea is simple. Take a photo of your child at home. Upload it to a generative AI tool like ChatGPT. Ask the bot to add a school-portrait-style backdrop, and out comes a picture that looks official.
Futurism reported on the trend, noting that parents have been sharing how they use generative AI to turn ordinary snapshots into portraits that resemble the ones they’d normally buy through school. The results have won over some families, though others have questioned whether the savings are worth uploading their children’s photos or ending up with an altered face.
Bond’s method is one of several approaches parents have tried. Some upload plain photos and ask the AI to add the background. Others use the tool to remove watermarks from professional school photo proofs instead of buying the finished images. Either way, the goal is the same: a school portrait without the photographer.
One TikTok mom chimed in with her own video showcasing AI photos of her kids, commenting, “no longer getting scammed by the cost of school pictures.”
The Cost Of School Pictures
The motivation is money. When there’s more than one child bringing home an order form, school photos can get expensive fast.
Commenters on the posts shared their own frustrations with prices. One parent said photos for three children cost more than $100. Another put the price of four digital files at just under $170.
Those figures are specific, and they explain why parents are looking for a cheaper route. The order form arrives at home, the price adds up, and suddenly a family is spending well over $100 on portraits that can be made at home for the cost of a wall and a camera.
What Can Go Wrong With The AI Portraits
Not every attempt lands perfectly. Some commenters said their tries changed how their children looked, even when they specifically asked ChatGPT to preserve their features.
The altered-face concern is real. When an AI is told to style a photo, it can sometimes stretch or shift a face in ways the original image doesn’t support. That means a parent who uploads a child’s photo asking for a school portrait might end up with a picture that looks off.
There’s also the question of uploading children’s images to an AI service. Some parents worry about privacy.
The Watermark Warning
The watermark issue is a separate problem, and it’s a serious one. According to FastCompany, erasing watermarks from photos that haven’t been purchased could be considered copyright infringement.
Should studios seek legal action, parents could be fined as much as $150,000.
That’s a real number, not a hypothetical. The warning is attached to a specific practice — removing watermarks from proofs that haven’t been paid for.
What This Says About School Photos
The trend is a small but telling sign of how AI is changing everyday life. A few years ago, this kind of trick would have required expensive software or a professional studio. Now it takes a phone, a wall, and a free chatbot.
The funny part is that the AI is doing the exact same thing schools have done for generations. A gradient backdrop and a child — that’s the formula. The difference is that now the backdrop is generated by code instead of painted by hand.
Bond’s caption captures the whole thing in one line: “In this economy?” The joke is that she’s cutting out the middleman, and the middleman is the photographer.
The trend is likely to keep spreading. More parents will try it, more kids will get AI-generated portraits, and more schools will have to decide whether to fight it or adapt.
For now, the takeaway is simple: if you want a school portrait, you can make one yourself. The technology is there. Whether you should is another question.
Key Facts Box
– Three children photographed by Carlie Bond
– Watermark removal could cost up to $150,000 in fines if studios pursue legal action
– One commenter said photos for three children cost more than $100
– Another commenter said four digital files cost just under $170
The trend is amusing, practical, and a little bit cheeky. Parents are using AI to save money on school photos, and the results are rolling in on TikTok. The technology is available, the savings are real, and the risks — watermark infringement and altered faces — are worth thinking through before you upload that first snapshot.
Source material: “Parents are using AI to generate pictures of their kids to save money on school photos,” Dexerto.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.