The Student Activities, Involvement and Leadership (SAIL) board deleted a Welcome Week poster from its social media pages in response to student concerns about the use of generative AI to make it.
According to a guide written by former Center for Inclusive Excellence coordinator Christl Caspar, generative AI can create new content based on information from large datasets.
“Content from generative AI can sometimes be indistinguishable from human-generated content because it relies on large amounts of human-generated data,” Caspar said. “However, this is not exclusively the case.”
Keely Sapienza, the director of SAIL, said the original poster was made with Canva, which includes built-in generative AI features to make images.
“A student brought a concern to our attention, and we decided to change the graphic to keep the focus on the positive aspects of Welcome Week,” Sapienza said.
Sapienza also added she wants attention to focus on the events themselves, not the poster itself. On their social media pages, SAIL posted a new poster created by a student instead of generative AI.
While the Welcome Week events such as Monte Carlo Night and the Pioneer Picnic will go on like normal, some students are still not happy with generative AI being used for graphic design at all. On the Instagram post depicting the poster, comments overwhelmingly mentioned and decried the use of AI.
Alexis Faessel, a senior animation major, saw the poster before it was deleted.
“I love the events SAIL does, but I’m really disappointed to see them using AI when Point Park has a whole graphic design major and other art majors,” Faessel said.
Rhett Spadacene, a junior animation major, said he has studied generative AI content for a few years and can usually tell if something is made with AI
“It rips from multiple artists at the same time and hodge podges it together,” Spadacene said. “Certain colors are very indicative – it’s always hot colors.”
Additionally, Spadacene noted that line weight is often inconsistent, and a yellow tint may appear on an AI generated image that gives it away.
“AI is absolutely abhorrent at correcting itself because it’s just consuming itself alive with the results it makes and the results it steals,” Spadacene said. “Even when ‘AI bros’ use a de-yellower, it doesn’t work.”
As an animation major, he thought the use of AI was disappointing.
“I find it very alienating that they couldn’t just see about finding more incentive to hire artistic talent or even doing it themselves,” Spadacene said. “As well, there’s a horrifying environmental impact on most of it.”
Point Park’s graphic design guide, which includes what colors to use for university graphics and how logos should and should not look, does not include any information on whether generative AI can be used in graphics.
While there is no specific university policy on AI, guidelines do exist.
Titled “Generative AI – Ethics of Practice,” the document outlines where the use of AI may be acceptable and may not be. For example, using generative AI to get ideas for a project or assignment is allowed as long as the use of AI is disclosed.
However, using generative AI to do everything is not acceptable. Listed as “The Robot Did My Homework,” the section notes that using AI to generate ideas and content with little change from the person using AI is “a mix of plagiarism and collusion.”
In Spadacene’s case, he said using generative AI in an animation or graphics class at all is an automatic failure, but experimenting with AI for a photography or scriptwriting class is allowed.
Still, he holds reservations on using generative AI at all.
“Even then, I don’t trust the robot,” Spadacene said.
