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Images that depict the faces of girls with nude bodies have led to the departure of leaders from a private school in Pennsylvania, prompted a student protest and triggered a criminal investigation.
A juvenile suspect was “removed from” Lancaster Country Day School and his cellphone was seized by investigators in August, Susquehanna Regional Police Department Detective Laurel Bair said Tuesday.
It’s the latest example of how the use of artificial intelligence to create or manipulate images with sexual content has become a concern, including within school settings.
U.S. law enforcement has been cracking down on graphic depictions of computer-generated children as well as manipulated photos of real ones. The Justice Department says it’s pursuing those who exploit AI tools and states are racing to enact laws to address the problem.
A new Pennsylvania state law that takes effect late next month explicitly criminalizes making or disseminating AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
And police in South Korea are on a seven-month push to combat explicit deepfake content, with tougher penalties, expanded use of undercover officers and increased regulation of social media. Concerns in South Korea deepened after unconfirmed lists of schools with victims spread earlier this year.
As part of the police investigation into what the Lancaster Country Day School describes as “disturbing AI generated photographs,” a search warrant was used this summer to obtain an iPhone 11 linked to a 15-year-old, according to court records. The records do not identify the teen.
A woman told police that her daughter said a fellow student had been “taking photographs of students and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to portray the female juvenile students as being nude,” according to a probable cause affidavit used to apply for the search warrant.
Matt Micciche, then the head of the school, told police the school had received a complaint about the photos in November 2023 through the Safe2Say Something program but the suspect, identified by his initials, denied the allegations, according to Bair’s affidavit.
When some parents became aware of the photos in May, Bair wrote, they also learned that the “AI nude photographs” had been posted in a chat room.
Bair, leading the investigation because the suspect lives in the Susquehanna Regional Police Department’s territory, said there has been shock at the school “that this is even occurring and that it happened within their small community.” She declined to say how many girls had been shown in the images but added that more information about the case will likely be made public in the coming two weeks.