Thibodaux, Louisiana– The teasing was relentless. Nude photos of a 13 year old girl with her friends, produced by artificial intelligencecirculated on social media and became the talk of a Louisiana middle school.
The girls begged for help, first from the school guidance counselor and then from the deputy warden assigned to their school. But the photos were shared on Snapchat, an app that deletes messages seconds after they’re viewed, and adults were unable to find them. The manager had his doubts about her.
The pictures were still circulating among the children. When the 13-year-old boarded the school bus in Lafourche Parish at the end of the day, one of her classmates was taking one of them to a friend.
“That’s when I got angry,” the eighth-grader recalled during her discipline hearing.
Fed up, she attacked a boy on the bus and called on others to join her. She was kicked out of Sixth Ward Middle School for more than 10 weeks and sent to an alternative school. She said the boy she and her friends suspected of creating the images was not sent with her to that alternative school. The 13-year-old girl’s lawyers claim he avoided school discipline altogether.
When the Sheriff’s Department looked into the case, they took adverse action. They accused two of the boys accused of sharing explicit photos, not the girl.
The Louisiana episode highlights the nightmarish potential of Artificial intelligence deepfakes. It can and does turn children’s lives around, at school and at home. As schools work to address… artificial intelligence In the classroom directionsthey often did little to prepare for what new technology meant for online bullying and harassment.
Once again, with children increasingly using new technology to harm each other, adults are falling behind the curve, said Sergio Alexander, a research associate at Texas Christian University who focuses on emerging technology.
“When we ignore digital damage, the only moment it becomes visible is when the victim finally breaks,” Alexander said.
The Lafourche Parish School District followed all of its protocols for reporting misconduct, Superintendent Jarrod Martin said in a statement. He said a “one-sided story” of the case had been presented that failed to explain its “full and complex nature.”
After hearing rumors about the nude photos, the 13-year-old said she walked with two friends — one of whom was on the verge of tears — to the guidance counselor around 7 a.m. on Aug. 26. The Associated Press is not naming her because she is a minor and because the AP does not typically name victims of sex crimes.
She was there for moral support, and didn’t initially realize there were photos of her as well, according to her testimony at the school disciplinary hearing.
Ultimately, a weeks-long investigation into the school in Thibodaux, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans, uncovered artificial intelligence-generated nude photos of eight female middle school students and two adults, the district and sheriff’s office said in a joint statement.
“Complete nudes with her face on,” is how the girl’s father, Joseph Daniels, described them.
Until recently, making them required some technical skill Realistic deepfakes. Technology now makes it easy to take a photo from social media, “naked” it, and create a viral nightmare for an unexpected colleague.
Most schools are “burying their heads in the sand, hoping this doesn’t happen,” said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Center for Cyberbullying Research and a criminology professor at Florida Atlantic University.
The Lafourche Parish School District had just begun developing policies on artificial intelligence. The school-wide AI guidance was primarily directed at academics, according to documents provided through a records request. The district also has not updated its cyberbullying training to reflect the threat of artificial intelligence-generated sexually explicit images. The curriculum used by its schools was from 2018.
Although the girls at Sixth Ward Middle School did not see the photos firsthand, they heard about them from boys at school. Based on those conversations, the girls accused a classmate and two students from other schools of creating and posting nudes on Snapchat and possibly TikTok.
The school’s principal, Danielle Correll, said the investigation went cold that day as no student took responsibility. The deputy in charge of the school searched social media for photos to no avail, according to a recording of the disciplinary session.
“He led me to believe that these were just hearsay and rumours,” the girl’s father said, recounting a conversation he had that morning with the school counselor.
But the girl was miserable, and the police report on the incident showed that more girls reported being victims as well. The 13-year-old returned to the counselor in the afternoon and asked to call her father. She said she refused.
Her father says she sent a text saying “dad” and nothing else. They didn’t talk. With constant ridicule, the girl sent a text message to her sister saying: “The matter has not been dealt with.”
As the school day ended, the principal was skeptical. At the disciplinary hearing, the girl’s lawyer asked why the deputy warden did not check the phone of the boy whom the girls accused and why he allowed him to ride on the same bus with the girl.
“Children lie a lot,” answered Curiel, the school principal. “They lie about all kinds of things. They blow a lot of things out of proportion on a daily basis. In 17 years, they’ve been doing it all the time. So, as far as I know, at 2 p.m. when I checked again, there were no pictures.”
When the girl boarded the bus 15 minutes later, the boy was showing the AI-generated images to a friend. The girl said fake nude photos of her friends were visible on the boy’s phone, a claim supported by a photo taken on the bus. Video from the school bus showed at least six students handing out pictures, Martin, the superintendent, said at the school board meeting.
“I spent the whole day being bullied and made fun of about my body,” the girl said during the hearing. When she boarded the bus, she said, anger was mounting.
After seeing the boy and his phone, she slapped him, said Curiel, the school’s principal. A video clip showed that the boy ignored the slap.
She hit him a second time, then the manager said, and the girl asked loudly: “Why am I the only one doing this?” The school principal said two of her classmates beat the boy before the 13-year-old climbed onto a bench, punched him and stomped on him.
A video of the fight was posted on Facebook. “The overwhelming sentiment on social media was expressions of outrage and demands for accountability for the students involved in the fight,” the district and the mayor’s office said in their joint November statement.
The girl had no prior disciplinary issues, but was assigned to an alternative school as the district moved Kick her out For a full semester – 89 academic days.
On the day of the girl’s disciplinary hearing, three weeks after the fight, the first boy was charged.
The student has been charged with 10 counts of illegal dissemination of artificial intelligence-generated images under a new Louisiana law, part of a wave of such legislation across the country. The second boy was charged in December on similar charges, the police department said. The authorities did not identify either of them due to their ages.
The girl will not face any charges due to what the Sheriff’s Office described as “the totality of the circumstances.”
At the disciplinary hearing, the school principal refused to answer questions from the girl’s lawyer about what type of school discipline the boy would face.
The district said in a statement that federal student privacy laws prohibit it from discussing the disciplinary records of individual students. Gregory Miller, the girl’s attorney, said he was not aware of any school discipline for the classmate accused of sharing the photos.
In the end, the committee expelled the 13-year-old. Her father said she cried.
“She felt like a victim many times — through the photos and the school not believing her and putting her on a bus and then expelling her because of her actions,” he said in an interview.
After being sent to the alternative school, the girl began skipping meals, her father said. Unable to concentrate, she did not complete any of her online school assignments for several days before her father placed her in treatment for depression and anxiety.
Her father said that no one noticed at first when she stopped performing her duties.
“I was kind of left behind,” he said.
Her lawyers appealed to the school board, and another hearing was scheduled seven weeks later.
By then, it had been so long that she could return to her old school on probation. But because she missed some assignments before getting treatment for depression, the district wanted her to stay at the alternate site for another 12 weeks.
For students who are suspended or expelled, the impact can last for years. They are more likely to get suspended again. They have become, and are likely to become, disconnected from their classmates I broke up with school. They are more likely to get less Grades And less Graduation rates.
“She’s been out of school enough. She’s a victim. She’s a victim,” Matt Urey, one of the girl’s attorneys, told the board on November 5.
“She is a victim,” he repeated.
“Sometimes in life we can be both victims and perpetrators,” Superintendent Martin replied.
But the council was vacillating. “There are a lot of things in this video that I don’t like. But I’m also trying to keep in mind what she went through all day,” said one member, Henry Laffont. They allowed her to return to campus immediately. Her first day back at school was November 7, although she will remain on probation until January 29.
This means no dancing, sports or extracurricular activities. Her father said she had already missed basketball tryouts, meaning she wouldn’t be able to play this season. He finds the situation “heartbreaking.”
“I was hoping that she would make great friends, that they would go to high school together, you know, that would keep everyone out of trouble and on the right track,” her father said. “I think they messed it up.”
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.