Where did this iCloud profile avatar come from?

I created an iCloud account for my daughter, and her profile has an avatar assigned to it that I didn’t choose:

I think it’s Stitch from the Disney film Lilo and Stitch and appears in my daughter’s contact record and in the family iCloud settings. The picture has been on the account since the moment I created it, and my daughter does not currently know of the existence of this account (or currently have any iOS devices), so can not have uploaded it herself.

Was this automatically selected by Apple? I created an account for my son last year and it didn’t have an avatar, and neither does my own, so I was wondering if this could have been picked up from another service she has a profile on (although I checked Gravatar and she doesn’t have one on there).

Solution 1:

I asked her (without giving away why) if she’s used this as a profile picture elsewhere and she told me it’s the pic on her YouTube profile. I added her Google email address as a secondary email (for account recovery) when I created her iCloud account, so Apple must have scraped her Google account for a profile picture.

Solution 2:

The person signed in to iCloud can upload any image they choose and no avatar is chosen by Apple. On macOS there are some generic account photos so your question makes great sense, but iCloud has no such stock content supplied.

To date, everything is a digital file that someone uploads from the photos app or loaded with intention in to the iCloud control apps (settings / system preferences) or web site.

Tell your daughter she has good taste and I’ll encourage you and your son to start having fun with art or photos that reduce to a set of pixels.