Photographs showing the faces of girls with nude bodies have sparked a student protest, a criminal investigation, and the dismissal of administrators from a private school in Pennsylvania.
Detective Laurel Bair of the Susquehanna Regional Police Department said on Tuesday that investigators had taken a young suspect out of Lancaster Country Day School in August and confiscated his cellphone.
It’s the most recent illustration of how artificial intelligence has raised concerns about the creation or manipulation of images that include sexual content, even in educational contexts.
Both modified images of real children and graphic representations of computer-generated youngsters have been targeted by U.S. law enforcement. States are rushing to pass legislation to address the issue, and the Justice Department claims it is pursuing people who abuse AI tools.
The creation or distribution of AI-generated content that depicts child sexual assault is expressly illegal under a new Pennsylvania state law that goes into effect late next month.
Additionally, South Korean authorities have been working for seven months to prevent explicit deepfake content by enforcing stricter laws, using more undercover investigators, and regulating social media more strictly. Unverified lists of schools with victims circulated earlier this year, raising concerns in South Korea.
According to court documents, a search warrant was utilized this summer to seize an iPhone 11 connected to a 15-year-old as part of the police investigation into what the Lancaster Country Day School described as unsettling AI-generated photos. The teen is not identified in the records.
According to a probable cause affidavit used to request for the search warrant, a lady told police that her daughter claimed a fellow student had been capturing pictures of students and utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to depict the female juvenile students as being nude.
According to Bair’s affidavit, the suspect, identified by his initials, disputed the accusations, but Matt Micciche, the school’s head at the time, said police the school had received a complaint about the images in November 2023 through the Safe2Say Something program.
According to Bair, several parents discovered that the AI nude photos had been shared in a chat room when they first learnt about them in May.
Bair, who is in charge of the investigation because the suspect resides in the jurisdiction of the Susquehanna Regional Police Department, stated that the school is shocked that this is even happening and that it took place in their little town. She stated that more details regarding the case will probably be released in the next two weeks, but she would not reveal how many girls were included in the pictures.
District Attorney Heather Adams’s spokesperson, Erik Yabor, stated on Tuesday that Lancaster County prosecutors had nothing to say regarding the ongoing inquiry.
The agency was unable to discuss particular tips or reports submitted to the Safe2Say Something program, which receives anonymous reports about safety risks from students and others, according to a representative for Attorney General Michelle Henry’s office.
According to Brett Hambright, our team often receives the tips and forwards them to the appropriate law enforcement or school staff for evaluation. We have verified that was carried out in relation to the issue you raised.
The majority of Lancaster Country Day’s high school students participated in a walkout on Friday, November 8, marching around the campus while chanting, “Hear us,” according to LNP in Lancaster. Give us credit. Come see us. On Monday, school was canceled.
According to LNP, the school announced on Friday that board president Angela Ang-Alhadeff had resigned and that it had split from Micciche. On Tuesday, the Associated Press called both of them to request comment. The Lancaster Country Day Board of Trustees wrote in a statement to the school community on Monday that it was still attempting to resolve the case and was trying to find a replacement for them.
We can state that within the previous week, the board was informed of information that prompted us to decide to address the issue, writing that we would do so in the long-term best interests of the school as well as the girls who have been affected.
According to the school, counseling has been made available to pupils, and the organization is currently assessing its safety processes, reporting guidelines, and other student safety rules.
The Associated Press, 2024. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. It is prohibited to publish, broadcast, rewrite, or redistribute this content without authorization.
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