Grandparents editing photos of their grandchildren with AI and giving them to family members or sharing them on social media is emerging as a new source of conflict. For the person who made the image, it can be an expression of affection. For the child’s parents, it can be seen as providing personal information without consent.

Business Insider reported on Sept. 21 that Ben Metcalfe (벤 메트칼프), who works in AI governance, recently found a caricature created by converting a family photo with AI at his grandparents’ home. Metcalfe said he understood it was made with good intentions, but voiced privacy concerns that his family’s face photos had been entered into an AI service.

Jen (젠), a 32-year-old mother of two, had a similar experience. She said her mother sent photos of her children made with the AI chatbot Grok last Christmas, but she worried about how her children’s facial data might be used in the future rather than thinking the pictures were cute. Friends also made and sent coloring-book templates and composite images using her children’s faces.

AI image abuse is behind such anxiety. Chatbot developer xAI was sued in connection with a plaintiff claim that Grok generated new deepfake exploitation images after real images of child sexual abuse victims were uploaded. X also responded that it blocks posts related to child exploitation materials, reports them to authorities and runs an automatic filter.

Experts said it is difficult to see the conflict simply as a gap in understanding of technology. Paromita Pain (파로미타 페인), a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said, "The way online sharing and privacy have been experienced can affect differences in perception across generations."

Leah (리아), a woman who gave birth to her first child, asked her mother not to post photos of her daughter on social media. She suggested a compromise allowing only photos that did not show the child’s face, but her mother broke the promise twice. Who gets to decide the scope of photo sharing within families and whether to input images into AI has emerged as a new core point of conflict.