Artificial intelligence-generated pies with students’ faces on them are the new sweet treat that Cal High students are in love with.
The popular “calhighpied” Instagram account has gone viral across campus, where two anonymous students accept photos of student faces to put them on different types of pies.
This account was created in early February and the first posts targeted a variety of students. Pies can be requested for a specific theme, such as make-up, farms, and tennis.
The first victim of this account was senior Madden Hatzenbuhler, who thinks the account is a fun way to highlight students across a humorous platform.
But students have mixed thoughts about this account. Some find this to be a funny joke, while others think it can seriously hurt someone.
“I feel like it’s fun to anyone,” sophomore Freya Darvell said. “But if there is a deeper meaning it can be seen as offensive.”
The Californian was able to get interview with the two students who run this account based on this dessert. The students only agreed to speak if their identities remained anonymous.
The students said they first came up with the idea for the account when they AI-generated themselves onto a pie and thought what other people would look like as a pie.
The students utilized Chat-GPT to create the photo for this account without any premium subscriptions.
Through this interview, the users addressed the student concerns of ethical use of AI and offense that it may create to different students.
“I don’t think that there will ever be a full ethical use [to] AI,” they said. “But we are trying to use it in a way that makes people laugh.”
Students do not know whether they will be pied or not and who pied them unless told. This created a sense of discomfort amongst students as pictures of them were being sent in without permission.
“It’s definitely a violation of privacy and consent,” senior Arjun Patel said.
Many of these posts include possibly offensive themes that include changing a person’s appearance in an exaggerated way and inserting student faces in unpleasant environments or themes.
“I don’t know who pied me, and the picture that they sent was horrible. I know it has over 20 shares, which is really embarrassing,” Patel said as he recalled his experience of being pied.
Other students do not read too much into this account and find it to be a pure joke that is used for satire and humoring other people.
“I don’t think this account is offensive unless someone is very sensitive,” sophomore Tomas Gao said. “Personally, I think that it’s a funny prank that you can pull on your friends.”
The use of AI in this particular circumstance, where it’s being used to generate artistic images, has been a concerning factor of this account that students are seemingly noticing.
“I do think AI is a good tool,” sophomore Jameson Blankenship said. “But I would keep it away from the arts.”
This account can be seen as a successful attempt of humoring the Cal student population with the use of generative AI.
The two individuals behind the account continue to express that they would only generate photos that they know would be humorous and not offensive. They trust Cal High students to not submit anything that would be offensive to their friends and hope to be a positive source of humor.
