Gilbert said other photographers were increasingly seeing the same behaviour from parents.
He noticed that about 25% of images sent out were being screenshot to be used in AI tools as he is notified when it happens.
“That’s a quarter of parents not paying. A quarter of profit lost for us. Also the school get a cut from the revenue as well, so it’s a loss for the school.”
The photographer said he had noticed a drop in profits in the past 12 months.
He said he heard parents at the school gates talking using AI to avoid paying after he had been inside taking photos.
“They were referring to my own photos that I took at the school.
“One said ‘Are you going to buy the pics?’ And the other said ‘I’m just going to get AI to remove the watermark off and it only costs me a pound’.”
He said all people had to do was claim they were the owner of the image in order for the watermark to be removed.
Gilbert told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast that he wanted his photos to be affordable so charged from £9.
“For the sake of a couple of pounds with AI you’re getting such a lower-quality product and ultimately it just makes us have to put prices up again, which is unfair for everyone,” he said.
“You are constantly fighting and chasing your tail.”
He added that the company he worked with was working to implement “high-tech methods to beat AI” including putting moving images over photos so they cannot be copied.
Dr Simon Thorne, a senior computer science lecturer at Cardiff School of Technologies, urged people, as a general rule, to “never upload any personable identifiable photos”.
“It’s a terrible idea. It’s a big risk,” he said.
“The dataset could get leaked online potentially and your material can be used to train future generations of the model. The image could be sold – you have no idea.
“Depending on the service, you may have very little idea how long that image is retained, how it is processed or whether it is reused.”
Thorne said if the photograph contained other children, it raises an additional issue because their parents may have no idea that an image of their child has been uploaded to an AI system.
“We recently had a case where a child was ill and missed a school photograph, so a parent used AI to add them back into the picture afterwards,” he said.
“I can understand entirely why they did that, but they did not seem to appreciate that uploading and manipulating images of children in this way can carry real privacy and safeguarding risks.”
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