In a time where exhibiting creativity and talent is more important than ever, Simpson College’s official social media pages have been using generative AI in their posts. 

The first time I noticed the official Simpson College page using AI was on June 27, when they posted four AI generated “watercolor paintings” of campus on their Instagram and Facebook. There were eight comments on Facebook and seven on Instagram all asking the same question, “who is the artist of these paintings?”

For an institution whose core values mention, “We design learning opportunities in which curiosity and creativity flourish…”, it is embarrassing to see the use of AI where student creativity can be shown. 

Another instance of AI usage occurred on July 15 on the Simpson Office of Admissions social media. They posted multiple AI generated renditions of Thunder as if he were in a Vincent Van Gogh painting, a Disney movie, “The Simpsons” and more. The Office of Admissions page at least acknowledged their use of AI by using “#aiart” in the caption of the posts. 

Admissions did not, however, want to acknowledge the pushback from students in the comments. They turned off the comments on both Facebook and Instagram after myself and at least five other students commented about their use of AI.

I stated Admissions should be highlighting the talents of students attending Simpson. Other comments highlighted similar ideas, as well as noting the environmental threats generative AI poses and how distasteful the post was.

As someone majoring in Marketing Communication, I believe the best marketing tactics for any higher education institution is to showcase the talent of their students and illustrate the beneficial impact the institution has on their students. Why is Simpson’s social media not doing exactly that?

If I was a prospective student wanting to pursue graphic design at Simpson, I would want to see graphic design work from students, whether it be an assignment from class or a project done by an intern for the Office of Marketing and Strategic Communication.

Just last week, the official Simpson page shared a set of coloring pages to their Facebook such as: George the Campus Cat on the sidewalk with disappearing lines and random circular dots in the background, the seal outside of College Hall with an incomplete third letter appearing between the S and C and the football field with hallucinated attempts at numbers on the yard line.

My personal favorite is the coloring page of a student wearing what appears to be a softball shirt, but it’s hard to tell because the words on it are not legible. Also on the post, it appears to have three students in the background with severely warped faces. All the coloring pages had laughable, blatantly obvious errors. 

Of course, there were at least 13 comments on this post criticizing the use of AI. One mentioned that we should be highlighting student talent, another stating that it is embarrassing and others mentioning that students using AI is unacceptable, so it should be unacceptable for the institution to use it too.

I think it’s important to think about the implications of using AI on the social media pages Simpson uses to promote itself. It doesn’t reflect the campus culture, it doesn’t look good and it shouldn’t be used when we could show off the talented students who attend this institution.