Flagler AI Usage Stirs Concerns and Conversation

By Logan Johnson

Like any emerging technology coming seemingly out of nowhere, the advent of generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the world of academia has turned heads, sparked curiosity and – for some – raised deep criticisms of Flagler College policy.

This past September, the Flagler College Instagram account posted a carrousel of photos depicting various students next to – what appeared to be hand-drawn – stylized caricatures of themselves. While seemingly innocuous on the surface, the Instagram post quickly drew widespread attention and criticism among the student body for its use of generative AI to create the not-so-hand-drawn cartoons.

Kaitlin Lederer, is a Flagler College alumnus who graduated in 2022 and is now a senior graphic designer at Brown Jordan Inc. Alongside other current and former students, she decided to share her discontent online with the college’s marketing ploy.

“Glad I’m paying $700 in student loans every month for my graphic design education so my alma mater can post AI despite having a campus full of artists,” sarcastically wrote Lederer in an Instagram comment.

Such sentiment is far from exclusive to Lederer. In fact, students across the College’s Instagram and YikYak – an anonymous online forum popular among Flagler students – seem to be expressing the same concern: by utilizing AI in the College’s marketing, opportunities to showcase student work get taken away, contributing to a broader trend of AI stealing jobs and experiences for young college grads.

Despite these widespread worries – Flagler’s Marketing office sees things differently. In response to these very student concerns, Flagler’s Senior Director of Marketing Holly Hill noted that “anybody [who] wants to volunteer with us to help produce content – we’re 100% open,” with the important caveat that, while some students might expect payment for such contributions, “our budget is only so big.”

Contrary to the student tendency to view AI as an existential, job-killing threat, Hill instead views the technology as an inevitable advancement we ought to adapt to.

“AI is not going away, and we can’t really bet against it … so how do you take this thing that they say is of the level of the printing press, and how do you create a future for yourself?” said Hill.

Whether it be youthful angst, a fundamentally different worldview driven by generational divide – the art student perspective is markedly different from Hill’s more moderated, ‘how-do-we-incorporate-this’ approach to the technology.

Second-year student Julieta Ramos Correa, a film and graphic design scholar and President of the Student Filmmakers Association, has a starkly different viewpoint.

“AI isn’t supposed to replace things that humans create. It’s supposed to replace things that humans don’t want to do like manual labor,” said Ramos Correa.

By using AI in College marketing and curriculum, the film student suggests that Flagler is ignoring the repercussions of AI, arguing that there’s “a distinct lack of understanding and community as well – because why couldn’t you just reach out to other students to draw it?”

Having seen the infamous AI-generated cartoon caricatures discussed prior, Ramos Correa takes issue with attempts to retroactively rationalize AI-usage.

“A lot of these accounts have been excusing it by saying it’s trendy; by saying that, they’re completely ignoring the repercussions of AI… they didn’t realize that using AI for that trend when you could’ve perfectly had other students draw it is just harmful in itself.”

From the students’ view, college administrators or social media managers ought to reach out to students themselves in order to avoid using AI in the first place. While Hill points to the wealth of opportunities already available to students provided they ask, many in the artistic student body appear to take issue with the use of AI in the first place.

Like Hill, public relations professor and artificial intelligence researcher Dr. Minji Kim doesn’t see AI going away anytime soon. While she’s hesitant to predict exactly how AI will change the world, Kim holds the view that, “AI should be taught at school the earlier the better” to prepare students for our world soon-to-change.

Like any society-shaking technological advancement, however, Kim recognizes that such education will take time to develop and will likely face challenges towards said development along political lines, complicating the issue further.

These challenges are evident by the fact that President Donald Trump signed an executive order Dec. 11, 2025 preventing states from regulating AI altogether. The order reserves AI regulation for the federal government, which notably moves slower than state legislatures, effectively slowing down all AI regulatory efforts to a halt.

While it may be too early to tell exactly how AI might morph our society – for better or worse – it’s evident that the technology’s growth in prevalence and usage has sparked fierce yet important conversations surrounding its future, and how we humans ought to deal with it.