Free Yearbook AI Policy Template
Decide what AI belongs in your yearbook with this one-page policy. It turns the four-question check from our guide, Can Yearbooks Use AI-Generated Images?, into rules your whole staff can follow. Copy it, adapt it for your district and ask your administration to review it.
Free for any school to use and adapt, whether or not you create your book with Picaboo Yearbooks. This template isn't legal advice; adapt it to your district's policies and your state's laws.
[School name] Yearbook: Our AI Policy
Adopted: [date] · Next review: [date]
Adviser: [name] · Editor-in-chief: [name] · Administrator review: [name]
Why we have this policy
Our yearbook is the true story of our school year and the people in it. We use AI to help us make a better book in less time. We never use it to change who our students are or what happened.
The 4-question check
Before any AI-assisted image goes to print, the editor and adviser confirm all four:
Real. Any edit to a real photo stays true to what the original photo was for.
Permission. Everyone whose likeness is created or changed by AI approved it before print. For students who are minors under state law, we follow the district's parent-consent rules.
Truthful. The image doesn't show a person, scene or event that didn't happen as if it did.
Disclosed. Any AI-generated image that isn't obviously AI gets an "AI" badge, a "photo illustration" credit or a colophon note.
OK to use
AI tools for organizing, tagging, captions, layout and workflow
Background removal, plus color, exposure and glare fixes
Light portrait touch-ups, like blemishes, that match our school photographer's standards
AI-generated illustrations, backgrounds and theme art with no real people in them, as long as they don't use trademarked characters or brands without permission
Not OK
Creating or changing a student's or staff member's face, body or likeness without their approval first
Putting real people into scenes or situations that didn't happen
Passing off AI images as real photographs
Uploading student photos to AI tools the district hasn't approved
When a student is missing from our photos
We never generate a likeness of a student. Instead we:
Reshoot, or collect a photo taken to our specs
Use a real candid, with the student's OK
Print "not pictured"
How we keep track
Staff mark every AI-generated or AI-altered image on the page ladder.
The adviser reviews every flagged page before it's submitted.
We keep likeness approvals on file for at least one year after the books are handed out.
Signed: Adviser ____________ · Editor-in-chief ____________ · Date ________
Sample wording for your school board's photo-consent review
This is for the board to consider during its next review of photography consent. Advisers shouldn't add it to forms on their own.
Student images may be processed by district-approved software, including tools that use artificial intelligence, to organize, tag and prepare school publications, consistent with FERPA, the district's directory-information policy, and applicable state student-privacy and biometric laws. A student's likeness will not be generated or altered using AI for any school publication without prior approval from the student and, for students who are minors, a parent or guardian. AI-generated images in school publications will be labeled when they are not obviously AI-generated. Families may ask which vendors process student images and may request deletion of their child's images according to district policy.
Questions for the board:
Which vendors can process student images with AI, and do any of them use face recognition?
Who has to approve AI changes to a student's likeness?
How long can vendors keep student images?
Should AI images be labeled in every school publication?
Read the full guide: Can Yearbooks Use AI-Generated Images? A 4-Question Check for Yearbook Teams →