A high-profile incident in which high school students shared artificial intelligence-generated pornographic images of underage classmates has drawn attention to the lack of legal resources for victims of such "deepfakes."
Although deepfakes have for years now drawn controversy over the creation of pornographic images edited to feature celebrities, the phenomenon gained new relevance for the nonfamous when girls at Westfield High School in New Jersey found out boys were sharing falsified nude photos of them in group chats, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Parents and school leadership discovered that the law does not provide any clarity about how to handle such a situation.
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"Obviously the behavior is unacceptable," Jake Denton, a research associate at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner. "But what are the actual ramifications?"
Faked sexual images are so new for law enforcement that lawmakers have yet to establish legal parameters around the practice. New Jersey does not have a ban on AI-generated pornography, for example.
Several uncertainties apply to the use of such images, Denton noted. For example, is an image considered child pornography if the deepfake attaches the face of an underage girl to the body of an adult woman? How does the average observer determine if the subject of an image is underage or not?
Some states are seeing efforts to write laws, however. A Minnesota law banning the spread of nonconsensual deepfake pornography went into effect in August. Texas has also barred the posting of political deepfakes. California banned both practices in 2019.
Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) introduced legislation in June that would make sharing deepfake pornography illegal nationwide and create new legal remedies for victims, though the bill has not advanced.
The spread of AI-generated pornography was noticed when several boys at Westfield were acting "weird" on Oct. 16, according to some of the parents. When some of the girls began asking around, one of them showed them that at least one student had used an AI-powered website to make pornographic images using the girls' photos online and then sharing them via group chat. The situation was reported to school administrators.
“This is a very serious incident,” Westfield High School Principal Mary Asfendi wrote in an email. “New technologies have made it possible to falsify images and students need to know the impact and damage those actions can cause to others."
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At least four of the girls' parents filed police reports.
Deepfakes are often used to create pornography. Adult content made up 98% of all deepfake content online, according to an analysis from the security firm Home Security Heroes. The technology has also grown cheap enough that a user can create a deepfake pornographic image within 25 minutes at no financial cost.