Permission to Publish in the Era of AI

Five years ago, it was the occasional email. A handful of parents starting to ask bigger, harder questions of the organisations their children spend time with. Now that same question lands in my inbox almost every day. 

It comes from thoughtful parents wondering about consent forms — the “permission to publish” forms that decide where images of their children end up online. Dance, martial arts, the local footy club or school — it doesn’t matter. The worry is the same. And lately, more and more often, the email comes from a parent who is genuinely upset. They’ve been told, gently or otherwise, that if they don’t sign, their child will miss out. Without finger pointing, a gentle reminder, that isn’t consent in is more like coercion. Under Australian privacy law, real consent has to be four things, and if even one is missing, it’s just a signature on a page and your organisation maybe acting unlawfully.

• It has to be freely given — the parent can say no, and their child is still included and belongs.
• Specific — a newsletter/paper and a public Facebook page are not the same thing, and yes to one is not yes to the other.
• Informed — the parent understands who will see the image, how it might be used, the risks and how to ask to take it down at anytime.
• And revocable — a parent can change their mind at any time, and their child carries on exactly as before.

What’s new is the pressure now being put on families to override it and I don’t believe it comes from a bad place. It usually comes from a communications habit built up over ten or fifteen years. Facebook and Instagram are cheap and easy, parents loved the photos and nobody mentioned that the risk profile had changed. Well, now the Australian regulator has.

As Professor Michael Salter put it, “there is no risk-free way to share images and videos of kids online — particularly kids in school uniform.”

A public photo of a child is no longer just a photo. It’s an AI input. It can be scraped, reverse-searched, face-swapped, or stitched together with a uniform, a first name in the caption and a location in less than 10mins. Less images is safer, there are ways to do this better and no, an emoji over the faces won’t work.

If your organisation can’t answer all of them yet, notice the pause. That pause isn’t a failing and it certainly isn’t a crisis. It’s simply the moment showing you where the work still lives in the gap between where you are and where a good system would carry you. Most schools find they can’t answer everything at first and they don’t know what they don’t know. That’s the point of Ctrl+Shft. It’s exactly the ground this tool was made to cover for you.

1. What’s the lawful basis for publishing children’s images publicly?
2. What’s the takedown policy for what’s already up?
3. What risk assessment covers AI misuse?
4. What channel lets non-consenting families stay fully included and still receive photos privately?
5. And who is accountable for image governance?

Children get one childhood. One. It isn’t content, and it isn’t data. It belongs to them.