If you have wandered around Tech recently, you may have noticed the plethora of AI-generated posters lining the walls. If you have attended an assembly, you may have noticed the AI-generated slides. If you have decided to spend your hard-earned cash on a school event, perhaps you were convinced by the AI-generated marketing.
Oakland Tech has used AI art and promo for the past few years, but now this reliance seems far more egregious. The beginning-of-year assembly on August 21st used various AI posters to promote the school’s events. This is the freshmen’s first impression of a staff that seems more inclined to use AI than take the time to design fun, human posters.
“Are they too lazy to actually put any effort into the school event that they work at and that they represent?!” complains Cody Tran, a student at Oakland Tech.
As of September 22, the football and cheerleading squads’ senior night banners have been set up around the field. Not only are these pictures AI, but they are completely ridiculous. Packed stadiums seemingly taken straight out of the NFL sit next to vistas of San Francisco. A cheerleader alleged that this was a parents’ doing, and that there was no official shoot. The players did consent.
The cheerleaders on these banners have AI-generated bodies and real faces. Though this may seem insulting, some cheerleaders are fine with it.
“I feel like this was better, because it was quick, and it was easy, and I feel like a photo shoot would have taken too much time and too much preparation,” says Ayana McClinton, a cheerleader at Tech.
Though AI is faster and easier, students must consider the soul it removes. Are these cheap and tacky player cards really the extent of our school spirit? Do students who see these not feel some shame for Tech’s supporters who have to walk past this digital sewage before games? Oakland Tech is responsible for fostering pride and spirit in its students, and the few hours a photoshoot takes are negligible compared to the lambasting these AI banners endure.
Multiple students allege that Oakland Tech administration and parents are the source of this AI. Alexis Gray Lawson, Tech’s Community School Manager and a primary event organizer, was unavailable to comment. Staff are meant to be role models for their students; their reliance on AI sets a poor, disappointing example.
The more Tech’s staff allow widespread AI use, the more they show students that AI is suitable for nearly any endeavor.
When AI is used extensively, students become so accustomed to it and incorporate it so deeply into their lives that the line of appropriateness blurs. When students utilize AI for everything, their critical thinking skills rapidly decline, something MIT calls “cognitive surrender.” If Tech stopped AI art and outsourced the work to real people, students could decide for themselves, critically, when and where to use AI.
The All Student Body, or ASB, has a Historian position tasked with maintaining the class’s social media and designing most of the posters. Despite being willing to create original work, Amina Tongun, the lead Historian, claims she and the other historians have no control over some of the school’s more AI-leaning pages, such as otathletic or othsconnections.
The more willing students are to resist AI, the more likely Tech admin and parents are to listen. AI is not only used to create posters and promote events, but it also shows students that AI is appropriate anywhere, lessening our critical questioning of its uses. Art classes could hold competitions, historians could be granted full access to all the school’s pages, and Tech could incentivise designers with perks and privileges. AI art may be the new norm, but that does not mean it is unstoppable.