By Lev Farris Goldenberg
City College needs to attract more students. Specifically, the college must raise its enrollment rate by 8,000 full-time equivalent students in order to avoid a State funding freeze that was set to take effect this school year.
In an effort to advertise via social media, City College has turned to AI.
Between April 12 and June 8, the City College Instagram (@officialccsf) posted 73 times. Approximately 54 of those posts appear to have characteristics of AI-generated images.
A review of several of the posts by Sightengine, a top-ranked AI-image detector, found that the images had a 99 percent chance of being AI-generated. Sightengine also found that the images were likely generated by GPT-4o, a generative AI program developed by OpenAI.
However, the college denied the use of AI-generated images in its marketing or social media content.
“When creating promotional content, the College prioritizes authentic representation — using actual photos and videos of our students, faculty, and campus whenever possible,” said Alexandra Céspedes Kent, the college’s media spokesperson.
On Sept. 11, the @officialccsf Instagram account posted a Reel featuring footage of the new Student Success Center spliced with two videos of students that appear to be AI-generated. The video, advertising the CCSF College Fair, is narrated by an artificial-sounding voice.
The college’s 2024-26 Strategic Enrollment Plan noted that “marketing will play a crucial role in the strategic enrollment plan because it directly influences the four core focus areas … recruitment, retention, completion, and partnership, and the overall reputation of the institution.”
Most of the posts between April and June advertised courses available during the 2025 summer and fall semesters, including Financial Accounting, Intro to Programming, Beginning Photography, Spanish 1A, Basic Drawing, and more.
Several of the posts contained cut-off images or misspelled words and phrases. An image advertising Beginning Photography cut off most of the word “Beginning.” Another post about a summer custodial training course advertised “preparing you for rel-world (sic) jobs in schools-hospitals, offices, and upblic (sic) buildings.”
Other seemingly AI-generated posts included incoherent hashtags such as “#CCSFummer” and “#CCFSummer.”
The City College Instagram feed during this two-month marketing push is full of young, happy, perfectly clear-skinned AI-generated students. A post advertising IDST 80C (Diversity and Social Justice: Sexism) features four smiling, AI-generated people of varying diverse backgrounds.
In a post advertising the College’s Culinary Arts department, an image of an AI chef slicing an AI carrot does not mention where or how to register for the program’s courses. The post has no caption.
At a time when City College needs to be attracting real students, the College has chosen to advertise with fake ones.
In 2023, City College contracted with ASIR Visual Marketing to beef up its recruiting efforts. ASIR would provide “marketing, branding, design, and media buy to build a custom brand in order to market and promote FREE CITY to the community and residents of the City and County of San Francisco.”
This July, a City College purchasing report stated that ASIR would “develop messaging, campaign theme, design all creatives for digital media buy, high school outreach posters, etc.” For its services, the college paid ASIR $99,500 to “design, develop, and execute Fall 2025 Campaign for CCSF.”
According to Vice Chancellor Lisa Cooper Wilkins, City College terminated its relationship with ASIR, but did not clarify when by press time.
Dr. Wilkins told The Guardsman that ASIR did not use AI to generate images or videos for the college.
In ASIR’s scope of work marketing proposal for 2023-26, submitted to City College in 2023, the company promised to “design artwork for all needed organic and paid postings for all social media platforms and streaming services.” As of November 2024, City College did not have an internal marketing department.
Upping Enrollment
When COVID-19 dropped enrollment rates in 2020, a state-funding measure known as “Hold Harmless” allowed City College to receive funding for more students than it had enrolled.
Starting this academic year (2025-26), the State will no longer apply cost-of-living increases to the college. This means that state funding for City College will freeze at 2025 levels as costs continue to rise.
If City College can add enough full-time students (8,000), it will receive state funding that accounts for the rising cost of living.
According to the school’s Enrollment Management Committee, student enrollment for the Fall semester totaled 19,159 as of September 18. In the Fall of 2024, City College had 19,688 enrolled students.
The most recent Reel on the City College Instagram features culinary arts student Bianca Cardenas working on campus, crafting desserts, and interacting with other culinary students.
“For me, not having to worry about tuition is a big relief,” Cardenas said in the non-AI-generated video. “But City College is about more than free tuition — my instructors and mentors care about me.”