Parents Face Copyright and Privacy Risks Using ChatGPT for School Photos
Parents are increasingly using AI chatbots like ChatGPT to remove watermarks from school portrait proofs or to generate their own school-style photos to save money. This trend, widely shared on social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook, involves uploading proofs to AI tools and prompting them to remove company logos. However, legal experts warn that removing watermarks constitutes a violation of copyright law, specifically the Copyright and Digital Millennium Copyright Acts. The copyright for a photograph belongs to the person who takes the picture, not the subject, unless explicitly transferred. Photography companies could sue parents for statutory damages ranging from $750 to $150,000 for willful infringement. Beyond copyright issues, experts are more concerned about the privacy implications of uploading children's photos to AI chatbots, as these images are saved within OpenAI's systems and can be used to train AI models, potentially exposing personal data.
