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    STEM camps: no generated kids in the ads

    Gear stills and captions.

    Versely Team••5 min read

    Gear stills and captions. A STEM camp ad that ships is a kit on a bench, a robot on a mat, a microscope in a window, then the session dates on screen. It is not a generated child at a soldering iron. "Camp aesthetic" is not a defence. A face that looks like a camper is a likeness of a minor. That is a hard stop.

    Photograph the gear. Write the offer. Burn the words after picture lock. Leave children off the generate.

    Minors are a hard stop, not a camp aesthetic

    A deepfake of a private person is not a style. TikTok's AI-generated content help is explicit: young people under 18, and adult private figures used without permission, are not a labelling problem. They are a ban. "We labelled it AI" does not create a grant. "It is an original character who happens to look like a twelve-year-old in a robotics hoodie" is not a defence if you used a child's photo as the seed, and it is not a defence if you invented a photoreal child to sell a seat.

    YouTube, Meta and X will not save you with a different philosophy. A generated extra in the background is not a carve-out. If that extra is a recognisable child, background is still a likeness. Do not "age them up" from a school photo. Do not use a counsellor's kid as a "style reference." A likeness release that covers generation is for talent you actually have. Most camps should just not generate people.

    Photograph the kit, not a child

    The stills you already own are the ad: the VEX field, the 3D printer, the breadboard, the safety glasses on the bench with nobody wearing them. Shoot them. Even light, the actual room, the logo on the kit that matches the enrolment page.

    Those frames are evidence. A generated "happy lab" with generated jaws inside the goggles is a costume. Image-to-video from the kit still keeps frame one as the file. Prompt only motion: a slow push across the printer bed, a blink of an LED that is already in the shot. Do not prompt "a diverse group of middle-schoolers discovering STEM." That restages the camp as a class you did not photograph, and it invents minors.

    If the brief needs a person, shoot a cleared adult instructor — or skip the person. A hand you photographed on the mouse is a still you locked. A generated hand completing the shot is a body you invented.

    Captions carry the offer; generated faces do not

    Session dates, ages, city, "soldering included" — those are strings you can defend. Video models do not typeset an enrolment line. Prompts that include "June 16–20, ages 11–14" will misspell it, and you cannot edit the miss.

    Two finishing jobs exist. Do not mix them.

    • Speech you can hear. Add captions to a video runs add_veed_captions: it transcribes the spoken audio on the tape and burns styled, timed subtitles. 21 BASIC presets at the standard rate, 9 DYNAMIC presets at 2×, 165 language codes. It transcribes; it does not translate. Accuracy follows the audio. A silent kit plate has nothing to transcribe. Captioning it is a pass spent on empty sound.
    • A line you wrote. Add a text overlay burns one authored headline on the whole file — the dates, the campus, the CTA. That is the usual camp offer. It is not a subtitle file.

    If an adult director talks on camera, transcribe them. Do not generate a child so you have a mouth to caption. Order is the product: lock the kit still, add a real voice if you need one, then burn type.

    What a STEM ad is allowed to show

    Allowed, tightly:

    • Gear you photographed, moving
    • Rooms with no people, or people you actually filmed
    • An invented object (a cartoon robot mascot that is not a child's face)
    • Captions and overlays you authored

    Not allowed:

    • Photoreal generated campers
    • A "generic kid" who is a real person you found on Instagram
    • Staff children as style references
    • A synthetic testimonial from a camper who does not exist — that is a fabricated first-person account on top of a likeness problem. AI testimonials and the fake review rule is the reviews half. This page is the child half.

    The look of a camp ad is lighting, a kit, and a date. It is not someone else's kid.

    FAQ

    If I label the video AI-generated, can I use a generated child?

    No. The under-18 restriction is permission, not labelling. A label tells viewers the media is synthetic. It does not create a grant, and it does not make a photoreal minor legal to run as an ad.

    Can I generate an adult counsellor instead?

    Only with a replica grant that names face, voice, duration and take-down, or by filming them. A staff headshot used as a "style reference" is how you get their head. Most weeks, skip the person and shoot the kit.

    The kit clip is silent. Should I still run auto-captions?

    No. Auto-captions listen. A silent plate has nothing to hear. Overlay the dates as a line you wrote. Transcribe later if you add a real voice.

    Is a stylised cartoon camper safer than photoreal?

    Safer than a replica of a real child, if there is no living referent and it is obviously illustration. It is still a choice. A kit still plus an overlay does the enrolment job without putting a child — drawn or otherwise — in the generate.