Protecting children’s identities in nursery photographs
Keep sharing the moments that matter. Without sharing a child’s real identity.
Photographs are an important part of the journey. The world they are published into has changed.
They allow you to share children’s experiences with parents, celebrate the warmth and personality of your setting and show prospective families what makes your nursery special.
Artificial intelligence means that an identifiable photograph of a child published on a website or public social media account can now be copied, scraped and manipulated in ways that were never envisaged when traditional photography and consent policies were created.
The Internet Watch Foundation reports that tools now exist which can produce a realistic likeness of a specific child from as few as 20 existing images, in as little as 15 minutes.
Read the IWF’s research for yourself. We use their figures rather than our own, because on a question like this the source matters.
The photograph may belong to your nursery. But once it’s publicly available online, you cannot control who copies it or what they do with it.
Aidos gives nurseries another way.
Twenty images is one settling-in week. One graduation album. A single well-photographed sports morning.
Safeguarding has always included photographs. The EYFS safeguarding and welfare requirements are changing what that means.
The safeguarding and welfare requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework require every setting’s safeguarding policy and procedures to cover:
“How mobile phones, cameras and other electronic devices with imaging and sharing capabilities are used in the setting.”
Department for Education guidance also tells early years providers that, for safeguarding purposes, they should keep the number of photographs and videos taken of children to a minimum, and use technically secure methods when sharing images and videos with parents.
These are important protections.
But there is another question for settings to consider:
What happens when a photograph is intentionally made public?
A setting may have clear rules around:
- who can take photographs
- which devices can be used
- parental consent
- where images are stored
- how photographs are shared with parents
Most of that governs sharing inside a trusted circle. Parent apps such as Famly, Tapestry and iConnect are built for exactly that, and a setting using one well is doing the right thing: the audience is known, access is controlled, and an image can be withdrawn.
Publishing to your website or a public Facebook page is a different question. There is no known audience, no access control, and nothing to withdraw once an image has been copied.
Consent controls whether you have permission to publish an image. It cannot control what happens to that image once it is publicly accessible.
You don’t have to stop sharing photographs. You can remove the identifiable child instead.
Aidos has been created specifically to protect children’s identities in photographs that need to be shared publicly.
Before an image is published, Aidos identifies the real child’s face and replaces it with a realistic synthetic face.
So prospective parents can still see happy children playing, learning and enjoying your nursery, without the photograph publicly exposing the identity of the actual child.
The nursery, uniform, activity and spirit of the photograph remain. The real child’s facial identity doesn’t.
Before and after images use licensed stock photography. No child from a nursery setting appears on this page.
Built for safeguarding. Not simply image editing.
Aidos was created with one purpose: to reduce the exposure of real children’s identities in publicly shared images.
When an image is protected through Aidos:
- The real child’s face is replaced with a realistic synthetic face.
- Images uploaded by settings are never used to train models.
- Image metadata is removed.
- Images are encrypted during upload and download.
- Processing takes place on secure infrastructure hosted in Ireland (Amazon Web Services).
- Your team remains in control of which protected image is used.
- The photograph can still look and feel like your nursery.
Because protecting an image shouldn’t mean losing what makes it worth sharing.
“The online sexual abuse of children is reaching pandemic levels, and the emergence of AI is fuelling the demand. Aidos is using AI for good, to prevent the innocent images of children hosted on school websites being turned into child sex abuse material to extort the image host and destroy a child’s life.
Aidos can prevent this form of sexual extortion in its tracks, which is why I am supporting them and their vision for a safer online world.”
One question. Ask it of every image you publish.
Before putting a photograph on your nursery website or public social media, ask:
Does the person viewing this photograph need to see the identity of the actual child?
If the answer is no, why publish it?
Aidos lets a setting move from relying solely on permission to publish, towards protecting identity before publication.
It’s a small change to the way photographs are prepared.
But it can make a significant difference to the amount of identifiable information about a child that is placed permanently into the public domain.
For a group, it is one decision applied everywhere, rather than the same question answered separately in every setting.
See what Aidos does to a nursery photograph
Before. The original photograph contains the real child’s facial identity.
After Aidos. The nursery, activity and moment remain, but the real child’s face has been replaced with a realistic synthetic face.
Before and after images use licensed stock photography. No child from a nursery setting appears on this page.
Try Aidos with your own images
See for yourself how Aidos can help your settings continue celebrating the children in your care, while taking an additional step to protect their identities online.
You will need an account before you can upload anything. Aidos is a closed system, so images can only be uploaded and viewed from inside an authenticated account, and the free trial is how you get one.
Pricing starts at £295 a year for 100 images. If you need more or fewer, we will work out pricing that fits.