Deepfakes created from school yearbook photographs on Tumblr

The combined situation

Photographs of you from school yearbooks, sports programs, or other school publications have been used as input to AI deepfake tools. The school's distribution of those photographs may itself raise institutional liability questions. When this scenario plays out on Tumblr specifically, removal proceeds through the statutory takedown process under 47 USC 223a combined with the scenario specific response that school cases require.

Why this combination is high risk

Tumblr reblogs create persistent copies of content across hundreds of unrelated blogs. A single original post can have thousands of reblogs, each requiring a separate URL in the takedown notice. For yearbook source deepfake cases, school yearbooks and sports programs are increasingly digitized and posted publicly online, which makes the photographs trivially available as ai generator input.

How removal proceeds

Tumblr accepts NCII reports through its content removal form and through its DMCA agent. The platform's 2018 adult content ban remains in effect, which means NCII reports also benefit from policy enforcement against any sexual content. Yearbook based deepfake cases produce strong evidence chains because the source material is institutionally controlled and the access to that source material is documentable.