Just to preface this with we are in Australia so please forgive spelling and language choices
I personally have a rule in place with all family and friends that my daughter (lets call her Rose) is not to have any photos of her put on social media. As her mum and dad, we have decided to limit her online presence as her personal identity is hers to own and we do not want to expose her to anything she is not aware of.
I have noticed that Rose’s day care centre has started using AI to generate pictures of the children to put around the room (think bag tags/name tags with their pictures for labelling pigeon holes).
Apart from the obvious problems with AI, I am concerned about the children’s photos being uploaded to the website without parental consent and how ChatGpt stores information like photos and names.
I understand that this makes for REALLY cute pictures and the children have a sense of belonging when they see themselves around the room and have their things labelled. I also fully understand that this takes a load off of the educators already insanely heavy workload as they just click a few buttons and it creates these elaborate labels without a lot of effort on their behalf. I just feel uneasy about it.
I would like to bring this up to the day care director or owner in a way that is anonymous but I am well known as the "over protective mum" so the idea of it being anonymous is not really feasible. How do I go about this without going down the rabbit holes that AI creates or sounding "crazy"?
NTA … ur child, ur rules. with everything going on in the world today and how everyone is exploiting AI, you are right to protect ur child, however you see fit
NTA! – I would not even be anonymous about it, this is something you should be very vocal about. They should have sent consent forms home before ever uploading photos of kids into an AI tool or post to social media.
This is not an OK policy and should be brought up. I’d reach out to the governing body for daycares to ask if they have policy about using AI tools and if they don’t do they plan to start one? That could be anonymous and doesn’t need to throw your daycare under the bus. But you don’t want to let this slide.
NTA there’s massive privacy issues and using chatgpt is helping training it because you’re feeding data into it. Data you might not have permission to place in it. My work (in Oz as well) has banned it bc of that. Not to mention the environmental impact stealing water for this servers.
I’d also chat to the other parents to make them aware that this has privacy concerns for your kids.
NTA. That’s dead easy to do without ChatGPT and there’s literally no reason they need to use it. Why do they even need to run it through AI to get a pic of the child they have a pic of?! Rewind 3 years. It wasn’t essential then. It’s not now. Also, they can kill less environment for these kids’ actual future by just using… the pictures they already have.
I’d raise it 100% this is your boundary, and they’ve crossed it without probably realising it. If they think you’re over zealous so be it. I find many daycare centres have great skills with kids but not when it comes to stuff like this. They don’t understand and maybe you explaining it to them might help them into the future
NTA. You have a very valid concern about your child’s data being potentially uploaded to a system that will be used in the future to train other AI or that might give the company rights to your child’s image. Ask which AI they’re using and if it’s a closed instance; there’s a chance they’re using a private instance that keeps all uploaded information localized. That’s what’s used by a lot of companies that have privacy concerns (schools, governments, anything that might get patented, etc).
This would be no different if they were uploading your child’s picture to an image hosting platform and then setting it to Private. There’s still a non-zero chance that something in the ToS gives them rights to that picture. The day care will hopefully be able to provide you with a privacy rights statement and confirmation that all of their systems (including AI) are closed.
NTA at all
That should be a no-brainer consent-required situation.
Absolutely talk to them and if they want a cute cartoon photo of daughter, there are certainly ways of making one that doesn’t require a photo upload.
NTA I’m a teacher in New Zealand and we have very strict rules around this. We are not allowed to use AI, in relation to students, without wtitten consent from the parents. Even then we have to have a really good reason for using it and I honestly don’t think their reason would be good enough. I would assume Australia has similar rules.
NTA there have been a lot of good well researched articles released about the recent “cartoonify yourself” trend. They outline all the risks involved in this exact thing. I would share one of those with the daycare and ask if they can clarify if they are using a closed and secure AI system
NAH. So in USA, this is almost a non-issue cause most make you sign a waiver to take photos, so of course talking to them about uploading it ANYWHERE is a worthwhile convo
This is less about AI and more about NIL.
We have signed a form to allow them to take photos for their family app. But I feel this is a different application of the photos
Before you have the discussion, have they told you they are using AI? Is it possible they are using photo editing software on a phone or local computer?
NTA. Your concerns are valid and somehow every generation of children managed just fine in classrooms lacking genAI garbage
NTA
This should have been discussed with the parents before it was ever implemented.
When I worked in childcare, we weren’t allowed to take any photos of the children without a written release from the parents. And we definitely couldn’t upload those photos anywhere – the most we did with them was print them out for little pictures to use around the classroom.