It’s happening again. I read a few things online, got talking to colleagues at a recent Google Summit in Bangkok and then as if it was meant to happen received a message from a good friend and technologist I genuinely respect. The topic being discussed; AI. But not the kind you might be thinking of now. This was the kind that makes the hair on my neck stand up and makes me really uncomfortable about what is happening.
We are witnessing a storm that isn’t brewing inside the classroom, it is rattling our public-facing websites and corporate social media feeds. Those school IG accounts, the Facebook pages, the newsletters, and yes, in some cases the TikTok accounts. Across leadership roundtables and administrative boardrooms, there is a growing, anxious movement confronting a chilling technical reality: generative technology can hijack a single static image of a child’s face and transform it into a sophisticated, altered video asset in under five minutes. Let me be clear at the outset: I welcome this conversation.
Here’s an example of a video generated using Google’s Veo using a single LinkedIn profile photo(Shared with permission from James Abela)
Walking through the public Instagram grids or promotional galleries of too many schools, my own including, it is undeniable that a genuine problem has taken root around the world. For years, institutions have treated students’ physical identities as a free, infinite resource for corporate marketing, broadcasting high-resolution portraits across indexable public servers(In other words, SEO optimised and searchable content). It is as if we are literally publishing our children’s digital visual assets the moment they step onto campus and leaving them permanently exposed to automated scraping long after they graduate. But as the landscape shifts from innocent promotion to systemic vulnerability, we must step back and ask ourselves a critical question: in our rush to protect our institutions, how do we find a balance between authentic storytelling and our absolute duty of safeguarding? Parent respond to seeing their children learn, love school, and experience the many activities on offer. How do they know about these and see these when not at school in person? The answer is right in front of us; The social media feeds. And THATS what worries me now.
Education as a sector is deeply susceptible to shock and knee jerk reactions, seeing as the children in our care are at the core of it all, this is VERY understandable. We’ve seen this countless times before and we will see it happen again, even my previous article mentioned this as we are seeing a real pushback to tech in the classroom. A little over a decade ago, the collective, knee-jerk reaction was to go “all in” on absolute digital transparency. Everyone wanted to showcase every smile, every forest school session, and every classroom triumph in real-time, high-definition glory. Broad ‘pixel coverage’ was rushed onto public sites under the vague promise of humanising the school brand. Now, driven by a highly visible and understandable backlash against identity harvesting and automated extortion, we run the very real risk of making an aggressive overcorrection, but maybe thats needed. Maybe this overreaction is one that needs to happen. A complete, unnuanced visual blackout of our schools’ vibrant life is not the solution here that would be just as shortsighted as its initial blind exposure. But whats our solution?
The arguments for maintaining traditional, face-forward pupil photography are deeply rooted in institutional survival and human psychology. In a highly competitive educational sector, schools must establish an immediate emotional connection with prospective families, especially private and International schools, which at the end of the day are businesses. Parents rarely buy into structural facilities or historical metrics alone; they invest in a living community. Seeing real children looking relaxed, happy, and engaged provides an emotional reassurance that a text-heavy brochure simply cannot replicate. It tells a powerful story of belonging, helping families answer the ultimate question of whether their child will fit into this environment.
However, the risk landscape has changed fundamentally and irreversibly. We are raising a generation of digitally comfortable learners, but we must never make the mistake of assuming that their technological comfort equates to structural safety. They can navigate apps beautifully, yet even with a curriculum teaching them all about oversharing and digital footprints(Though I personally call it digital tattoos) they have absolutely zero institutional power over their permanent digital presence as the website has posted then having a great ‘learning experience’. When a school publishes a clear, front-facing portrait of a minor, we are making a permanent privacy decision on their behalf in an era where data scraping is fully automated. Traditional photo consent waivers were written for a world of static print media; they were never designed to indemnify a family against the automated weaponisation of a child’s likeness.
In my daily work leading computing and working directly with young learners, I constantly see the tension between institutional image and ethical technology usage. Do I want our schools to look like sterile, empty architectural monoliths entirely devoid of human life? NO! Should we completely throw our hands up and stop sharing the incredible things happening inside our classrooms? Uhm, definitely not! (I know, shocking idea, actually focus on the creative process instead of just indexing biometric data!)
This isn’t an abstract or distant anxiety; it is a clear and present institutional crisis documented with chilling clarity by the BBC, signalling a threat that cuts ruthlessly across both sides of the classroom desk. For our students, this manifests as an algorithmic predator, where ordinary photos are scraped to feed an automated machinery of financial extortion and synthesised abuse. Yet, we are profoundly blind if we assume the crosshairs are trained solely on the adults. This identical technology is already being turned against educators, providing a friction-free tool for any disgruntled actor or impulsive student to manufacture flawless, fabricated evidence. A career spent building institutional trust and pedagogical excellence can be completely dismantled in seconds by a single synthetic audio clip or deepfake video designed to traduce a teacher’s character. Recently the Guardian write about this very real risk here and here. When the traditional boundaries of visual and auditory proof are this easily dissolved, the unmeasured exposure we permit on our public networks leaves both the child in the desk and the adult at the board equally vulnerable to an unprecedented tier of digital violence.
The true creative breakthrough lies in shifting the narrative lens entirely, moving the focus away from the face and onto the learning itself. We do not need a total analogue regression to keep our children safe. Instead, we can masterfully communicate warmth, community, and active learning without ever exposing a single recognizable face. This means adopting a thoughtful, documentarian approach to imagery. By carefully choosing angles that capture over-the-shoulder perspectives, natural silhouettes against light, active hands operating science apparatus, or macro shots of student collaboration, we naturally draw the viewer’s eye to the thinking and the action rather than the individual’s identity.
Ultimately, this entire debate hits us with a fundamental, timeless truth: the risk is simply no longer worth it. I firmly believe that even schools with massive, highly sophisticated marketing departments possess the creative capacity to build an incredibly strong, evocative brand without the need to showcase real children’s faces. Good branding is good branding, and bad branding is bad branding. Technology has simply acted as an amplifier for our safeguarding responsibilities, forcing us to become more imaginative storytellers. Let us use this global shift to refine our practices, ensuring that our desire for institutional promotion never outpaces our sacred duty to protect the very children we are trying to inspire.