Three girls walked into their guidance counselor’s office around 7 a.m. one morning at Sixth Ward Middle School in Louisiana. They had all heard murmurs of a picture set making the rounds at their school: explicit photos of girls created using artificial intelligence, with bodies Photoshopped but faces of three girls who happened to attend Sixth Ward Middle School in Louisiana.
What develops after the incident tends to show just how unready schools are for the negative aspects of artificial intelligence and just how fast the problem can get out of hand for the involved students.
“We pleaded for help,” the 13-year-old girl and her friends asked for assistance. They went first to their school guidance counselor and then to the sheriff’s deputy who was the officer at their school.
However, these images were sent on Snapchat; they vanish after a couple of seconds when viewed. Thus, the adults could not trace them. The school principal even questioned their existence.
“Kids lie a lot,” Principal Danielle Coriell would recall at a disciplinary hearing. “They lie about all kinds of things.”
Meanwhile, among the students, the pictures kept circulating. Before even a day was over, a boy was sharing these fake nudes with his fellow students on a school bus. But when a 13-year-old girl saw her and her girlfriends’ pictures circulating on his cell phone when she entered the bus, something inside her simply snapped.
She embarked on an attack on him. Others joined in. The incident was recorded in video footage that was placed on Facebook.
The Rise of AI-Generated Harassment in Louisiana Schools
The girl, who never had issues of school discipline, was expelled and had to go to an alternative school for over 10 weeks. The boy that she suspected of spreading the pictures? Never had any school discipline, according to her attorneys.
This case in Louisiana shines a light on a crisis that schools in America are facing in large numbers. The creation of deepfakes showing a person in their naked form has become far too easy. Technology has reached the point where a user can harvest a photo from a social media site in a matter of seconds and “nudify” it.
“When we disregard digital violence, ‘the only moment that comes into focus is when the ‘victim breaks,’” Sergio Alexander, a research associate at Texas Christian University and a researcher of emerging technology, explained.
In Lafourche Parish’s school in Thibodaux, a suburb of New Orleans, some 45 miles to the west, the probe revealed nude pictures of eight girls in mid-grade school and two adults created using AI tech. “Full-body nudes with her face superimposed upon them,” is how Joseph Daniels, father of one of the victims, described what his child had to go through.
However, Lafourche Parish School District policies are still evolving concerning artificial intelligence. Their policies mostly covered academics rather than bullying. Their digital harassment curriculum had existed since 2018, but AI image manipulation technology was not yet widely available to smartphone users at that time.
“Most schools are just kind of burying their heads in the sand, hoping that this isn’t happening,” said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and a professor at Florida Atlantic University.
A 13-Year-Old’s Struggle After an AI Deepfake Scandal
Tragically, the aftermath is extremely bad for the 13-year-old victim. She gave up meals at alternative school and was not concentrating in her online schooling.
Her father put her in therapy because she was suffering from depression and anxiety, although she was behind in school.
“She was kind of a victim, got left behind,” Daniels stated. “She was just a victim of the photographs, of the school not believing her, then them putting her on a bus, expelling her for what she did.”
Approximately three weeks after the fight, the first boy was formally charged with 10 counts of unlawful dissemination of AI-generated images after the enactment of a new law in the state of Louisiana.
A second boy had charges brought against him in December. charges were never brought against the girl due to “the totality of the circumstances” according to the sheriff’s department.
The High Cost of a Middle School Mistake
During the appeal hearing called by the school board on November 5, one of the attorneys for the girl offered the following passionate appeal: ‘She is a victim. She is a victim.'”
“Sometimes in life we can be both victims and perpetrators,” said Superintendent Jarod Martin.
The board finally gave her permission to return to her regular school as of November 7. Yet she is only on probation until January 29. No dances, no sports, no extracurricular activities. She did not miss basketball tryouts.
It is heartbreaking for her father. He expected that the middle school experience would give his daughter the friendships she could maintain in high school and guide her in the right direction. “I think they ruined that,” he said.
“The case highlights a very disturbing truth,” says Jim Steyer in a statement about the issue. “The speed at which technology is advancing means that schools are perilously behind in protecting children from being victimized by it
