Deepfake Education

There is a lot more to be said about the top story this week:

Educational Malpractice

More Details

As the story indicates, this went on for months. The 13-year-old who finally snapped first became involved in supporting two friends who came to her for help. Those girls learned that the boys had created naked photos of them by getting nude body images from the Internet, and then switching out the body’s faces for theirs. The source story from AP said it was with “A.I.,” and that’s possibly even true, but that sort of manipulation has been possible for many years with Photoshop and other tools.

A.I. can make certainly make that manipulation easier, if you use a non-mainstream model that doesn’t have safeguards against what, in my opinion, is a very serious crime: they were, in a very real sense, creating child pornography. The story had nothing about that aspect, which in my opinion indicates a serious lapse in reporting: it’s such an obvious question to pursue with law enforcement. AP put two reporters on this story, and at least one did go to the school, with a staff photographer.

At the beginning, when the two friends came to the 13-year-old for support, she took them (“one nearly in tears”) to the guidance counselor. At the time, she didn’t even know that she also was a victim of the faked photos.

Law Enforcement Takes it Seriously

The school did investigate, but couldn’t find the photos, hence the principal’s despicable accusation that the girls were lying. That, in part, was based on their laughable contention when, as AP reported, the “investigation came up cold that day as no student took responsibility.” Snort! Sheriff’s investigators of course have better investigatory tools: they found “nude images of eight female middle school students and two adults,” AP reported, though without specifying how long that took.

The way I would have worded that: actual investigators found “faked nude images of eight female children from the school, as well as two adults.” (The adults’ genders were not mentioned.)

Call the primary victims of this crime what they are: children. Not “underaged women” as such victims are so often called, including in the widely reported Epstein scandal. They’re children.

AP’s reporters brought in yet another expert, Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University, who told them that most schools are “just kind of burying their heads in the sand, hoping that this isn’t happening.”

But it is happening, and yay that this blew up into a big story, and — I hope — a big lawsuit. That should wake up schools all across the country: the Lafourche Parish School District’s policy manual doesn’t even talk about this aspect of cyberbullying, AP found.

As noted, two boys were charged with crimes. The girl has not been, the department says, due to the “totality of the circumstances.” At least some of the adults in this story have common sense.

Hostile Environment

Not only did the boys create a massively “hostile environment” in a place that’s supposed to feel safe for children, but for school staff to allege that the girls are simply lying is outrageous: imagine how difficult it is to report that boys are distributing what they purport to be their naked bodies! It is almost certainly humiliating to have to simply talk about that, especially when it’s true (humiliation stacked on top of humiliation).

The AP reporters at least understand that: “Once again, as kids increasingly use new tech to hurt one another,” wrote reporters Heather Hollingsworth and Jack Brook, “adults are behind the curve, said Sergio Alexander, a research associate at Texas Christian University focused on emerging technology.” That sentence introduces his quote: “When we ignore the digital harm,” Alexander said, “the only moment that becomes visible is when the victim finally breaks.”

Which, indeed, is exactly how this story suddenly burst into the national news, much to the very deserved embarrassment of the school district as they likely will head to court to defend their indefensible actions.

Expulsion

As we have seen in countless Zero Tolerance stories, schools are quick to blame children when the professionally educated adults at the schools aren’t held to the same standards as pupils.

Yet Louisiana as a state is actually on the ball on this topic. “Title 14 – Criminal Law §14:73.13. Unlawful deepfakes” (as revised in 2024) says, “‘Deepfake’ means any audio or visual media in an electronic format, including any motion picture film or video recording, that is created, altered, or digitally manipulated in a manner that would falsely appear to a reasonable observer to be an authentic record of the actual speech or conduct of the individual or replace an individual’s likeness with another individual and depicted in the recording.”

Here is the relevant part of the law:

Any person who, with knowledge that the material is a deepfake depicting a minor, knowingly advertises, distributes, exhibits, exchanges with, promotes, or sells any sexual material that depicts a minor engaging in sexual conduct shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labor for not less than ten nor more than thirty years, a fine of not more than fifty thousand dollars, or both. At least ten years of the sentence of imprisonment imposed shall be served without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence.

Whether a deepfake of a naked child constitutes them “engaging in sexual conduct” is up to a court to decide, but consider that law’s definition of that point: “‘Sexual conduct’ means any of the following, whether actual or simulated: sexual intercourse … [or] exhibition of the genitals or pubic or rectal area for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer….”

On the face of it, those boys could be in for “imprisonment at hard labor for not less than ten nor more than thirty years.” This is serious, serious business.

The Girl’s Real Injuries

The effects on the girl go way beyond the humiliation of fake nude photos.

“I went the whole day with getting bullied and getting made fun of about my body,” she said at her disciplinary hearing. When she got on the bus to go home, apparently immediately after the principal dismissed her accusation as lies, the boy on the bus was showing other boys naked photos with her face attached. The girl slapped him. “The boy shrugged off the slap, a video shows,” AP reports — it’s common for school buses to have security cameras.

When he shrugged it off, she slapped him again, and called out, “Why am I the only one doing this?” Two other students backed her up, punching the boy, and the girl joined them in the beating.

The girl previously had no disciplinary record. When the disciplinary panel, convened after the bus incident, ruled that she should be expelled and sent to an alternative school for 89 days — a full semester — the girl broke down, weeping. “She just felt like she was victimized multiple times,” her father said — “by the pictures and by the school not believing her and by them putting her on a bus and then expelling her for her actions.”

AP identifies the girl’s father by name; I’m choosing not to in a surely futile attempt to shield the girl from identification. It’s very likely that if lawsuits are filed, she will be identified by name, and that’s OK if she chooses to stand up and bravely represent herself and other girls at the school.

But that’s a tough “if” considering she has already crumbled at least somewhat under the pressure.

How so, beyond weeping? The “alternative” school didn’t even notice (or care) that she was skipping meals, her father said, and didn’t complete any of her assignments. Her father got her to a therapist to treat her resulting depression and anxiety. “She kind of got left behind,” he said, though “kind of” is awfully charitable of him.

Yep, she was dumped to fend for herself as punishment for reporting her own victimization. Her attorneys got the expulsion reversed, after a significant amount of damage was done by the uncaring “alternative” school, and being isolated from her support network of friends for weeks.

“At the disciplinary hearing,” AP reported, “the principal refused to answer questions from the girl’s attorneys about what kind of school discipline the boy would face.”

“She,” said one of her attorneys told the school board in the expulsion reversal hearing, “is a victim.”

And the response of Superintendent of Schools Jarod Martin? “Sometimes in life we can be both victims and perpetrators,” he said.

The principal and superintendent should be prohibited from ever working with children again. The sad thing is, there are people just like them at the helm of many, many schools.

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