Eight months after the Criterion reported that CMU Tech’s “Success Starts With Heart” campaign utilized images generated by artificial intelligence (AI), CMU’s Marketing Department now reports a changed perspective on the ethics of AI.
Despite this claim, the AI-generated advertising for CMU Tech’s HVAC program remains up on the landing page of the CMU Tech website.
When the story first broke in February, Vice President for Communications David Ludlam confirmed that the visuals on CMU Tech’s website were AI renderings meant to represent current students.
CMU Marketing generated additional images to advertise the Culinary Arts program. These drew criticism from students and faculty because of concerns over AI replacing real photography of real students.
Assistant Vice President of Marketing and Brand Strategy Katlin Birdsall said the decision stemmed from limited options when the HVAC program began.
“HVAC is one of our newer programs that’s getting up and running, and so, at the time, it just wasn’t possible to capture our students,” Birdsall said. “As often as we can, we want to take and use photos of our students, but there are times when we’ve used both stock photography or AI-generative images.”
Birdsall did not provide a comment about the Culinary Arts program images. She emphasized that CMU’s newest campaign marks a shift away from the use of AI.
“We launched a new campaign called ‘These Hands’ in August,” she said. “There’s no stock video footage, there’s no AI; it’s all our students.”
“These Hands” is a one-minute commercial. The CMU Tech website main page does not include visuals from the advertisement.
Manager of Video Production, Streaming Distribution and Photography Services Bronson Henriques echoed Birdsall’s sentiments about CMU Marketing trying to focus on authenticity now.
“We want it to be authentic. We want it to be our people,” Henriques said. “If we end up using AI, let’s have an understanding as to why we did that and see if the justification makes sense.”
He added that student creativity continues to be integral to CMU Marketing’s branding efforts.
“We can literally show you hundreds of examples of our students who are photographers in our office and their work being used in numerous print materials and on the website,” he said.
From Henriques’ perspective, AI is not a threat, but a neutral tool.
“If it helps me get the job done more efficiently, I’m all for it,” he said.
CMU Marketing’s revised stance on AI comes alongside a broader campus trend toward incorporating, rather than banning, emerging technology.
Communication Studies Professor Scott Andrews recently led an event to teach other instructors how to use AI in classrooms responsibly as part of a continuing education class for faculty.
“We owe it to students to help them be even better qualified to be out there in the real world,” Andrews said. “We can’t avoid it. We’ve got to use it and show them how to use it.”
He argued that forbidding the technology entirely leaves students unprepared.
“If we ban it, then you’re disadvantaging the student, because their competitors are using it,” Andrews said.
At a previous continuing education class, professor of film, animation and photography Evan Curtis told faculty that younger artists often fear AI. According to Curtis, design students are beginning to view it differently this semester.
“Young artists are immediately going to see it as a threat they do not understand, but I know the graphic design students are using it well,” Curtis said.
That sentiment aligns with CMU’s current goals: encouraging students to experiment with new tools while maintaining transparency about their use.
Both marketing staff and professors said education, not avoidance, will determine whether AI strengthens or weakens creative work.
Henriques compared the university’s adjustment to any technological shift.
“The market will call you out when you’re making a mistake, whether that mistake is using AI or something else,” he said. “If the market says you’re inauthentic for using these AI photos, then we learn from it and course correct.”
Images that are not AI-generated continue to appear in new university advertising materials, such as the recent “Featherstone University” commercial.
Despite these changes and CMU Marketing’s nuanced perspective, the AI-generated images from the “Success Starts With Heart” campaign for the HVAC program remain visible on the CMU Tech main webpage with no indication of an update.
