THIBODAUX, La. (AP) — The teasing was non-stop. Nude images of a 13-year-old girl and her friends, generated by artificial intelligence, were circulating on social media and had become the talk of a Louisiana middle school.
The girls asked for help, first from a school guidance counselor and then from a sheriff’s deputy assigned to their school. But the images were shared on Snapchat, an app that deletes messages seconds after they’re viewed, and adults couldn’t find them. The principal had doubts that they even existed.
Among the children, the pictures were still spreading. When the 13-year-old girl got on the Lafourche Parish school bus at the end of the day, a classmate was showing one of them to a friend.
“That was when I grew up,” the eighth grader recalled during her disciplinary hearing.
A woman, attacked a boy on the bus, and invited others to join her. She was expelled from Sixth Ward Middle School for more than 10 weeks and sent to an alternative school. She said that the boy who she and her friends suspected of creating the images was not sent with her to that alternative school. The lawyers of the 13-year-old girl allege that she completely avoided school discipline.
When the sheriff’s department looked into the case, they took the opposite actions. They accused two of the boys who had been accused of sharing explicit images — and not the girl.
The Louisiana episode highlights the nightmarish potential of AI deepfakes. They can, and do, change children’s lives — at school, and at home. And while schools are working to address artificial intelligence in classroom instruction, they have often done little to prepare for what the new technology means for cyberbullying and harassment.
Again, as kids increasingly use new technology to hurt each other, adults are behind the curve, said Sergio Alexander, a research associate at Texas Christian University focused on emerging technology.
“When we ignore digital damage, the only moment it becomes visible is when the victim finally breaks,” Alexander said.
In Lafourche Parish, the school district followed all of its protocols for reporting misconduct, Superintendent Jarod Martin said in a statement. He said a “one-sided story” of the case has been presented that fails to show “its totality and complex nature.”
A girl’s nightmare starts with rumours
After hearing rumors about the nude images, the 13-year-old girl said she went with two friends — one almost in tears — to the guidance counselor around 7 a.m. on August 26. The Associated Press is not naming her because she is a minor and because AP does not usually name victims of sex crimes.
She was there for moral support, initially not realizing there were images of her too, according to testimony at her school’s disciplinary hearing.
Ultimately, the weeks-long investigation at the school in Thibodaux, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans, uncovered AI-generated nude images of eight female middle school students and two adults, the district and the sheriff’s office said in a joint statement.
“Full nudes with her face placed on them” is how the girl’s father, Joseph Daniels, described them.
Until recently, some technical skill was needed to make realistic deepfakes. Technology now makes it easy to remove a photo from social media, “sanitize” it and create a viral nightmare for an unsuspecting classmate.
Most schools are “burying their heads in the sand, hoping it doesn’t happen,” said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University.
The Lafourche Parish School District was just beginning to develop policies on artificial intelligence. AI guidance at the school level addressed mainly academics, according to documents provided through a records request. The district also had not updated its cyberbullying training to reflect the threat of AI-generated sexually explicit images. The curriculum used by her schools was from 2018.
A school investigation hits obstacles
Although the girls at Sixth Ward Middle School had not seen the images firsthand, they heard about them from boys at the school. Based on those conversations, the girls accused a classmate and two students from other schools of creating and spreading the nudes on Snapchat and possibly TikTok.
The principal, Danielle Coriell, said that a cold investigation emerged that day as no student took responsibility. The deputy assigned to the school searched social media for the image without success, according to a recording of the disciplinary hearing.
“I was led to believe that this was just hearsay and rumours,” said the girl’s father while recounting a conversation he had that morning with the school counselor.
But the girl was miserable, and a police incident report showed that more girls were reporting that they too were victims. The 13-year-old returned to the counselor in the afternoon, and asked to call her father. She said she was refused.
Her father says she sent a text that said, “Dad,” and nothing else. They did not speak. With the non-stop mocking, the girl texted her sister, “It’s not being handled.”
As the school day ended, the principal was skeptical. In the disciplinary hearing, the girl’s lawyer asked why the sheriff’s deputy did not check the phone of the boy who was accusing the girl and why he was left on the same bus as the girl.
“Children lie a lot,” replied Coriell, the principal. “They lie about all kinds of things. They blow things out of proportion on a daily basis. In 17 years, they do this all the time. So as far as I know, at 2 o’clock when I checked again, there were no pictures.”
A fight broke out on the school bus
When the girl got on the bus 15 minutes later, the boy was showing the AI-generated images to a friend. Fake nude images of her friends were visible on the boy’s phone, the girl said, a claim supported by a photo taken on the bus. Video from the school bus showed at least half a dozen students circulating the images, Martin, the superintendent, said during a school board meeting.
“I was going through the whole day with bullying and being bored of my body,” said the girl in her hearing. When she got on the bus, she said, she was growing angry.
After seeing the boy and his phone, she slapped him, said Coriell, the principal. The boy dislocated his shoulder, a video shows.
She hit him a second time. Then, the principal said, the girl asked out loud: “Why am I the only one doing this?” Two classmates hit the boy, the principal said, before the 13-year-old climbed onto a chair and punched and headbutted him.
A video of the fight was posted on Facebook. “The overwhelming sentiment on social media was one of outrage and a demand that the students involved in the fight be held accountable,” the district and sheriff’s office said in their joint statement released in November.
The girl had no past disciplinary problems, but was assigned to an alternative school as the district moved to expel her for an entire semester — 89 school days.
Weeks later, a boy is charged
It was on the day of the girl’s disciplinary hearing, three weeks after the fight, that the first of the boys was charged.
The student was charged with 10 counts of unlawful dissemination of images created by artificial intelligence under a new Louisiana state law, part of a wave of such legislation across the country. A second boy was charged in December with identical charges, the sheriff’s department said. Neither has been identified by authorities due to their ages.
The girl would not face any charges due to what the sheriff’s office described as the “totality of the circumstances.”
At the disciplinary hearing, the principal refused to answer questions from the girl’s lawyers about what kind of school discipline the boy will 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 has no knowledge of any school discipline for a classmate accused of sharing the images.
Ultimately, the panel dismissed the 13-year-old. She cried, her father said.
“She just felt that she was victimized multiple times – by the pictures and by the school not believing her and by putting her on a bus and then expelling her for her actions,” he said in an interview.
Consequences send a student out of the course
After being sent to the alternative school, the girl started skipping meals, her father said. Unable to concentrate, she didn’t complete any online schoolwork for several days before her father got her into therapy for depression and anxiety.
Initially no one noticed when she stopped doing her errands, her father said.
“It’s kind of left behind,” he said.
Her lawyers appealed to the school board, and another hearing was scheduled for seven weeks later.
By then, so much time had passed that she could have gone back to her old school on a trial basis. But because she had missed assignments before being treated for depression, the district wanted her to stay at the alternative site for another 12 weeks.
For students who are suspended or expelled, the impact can last for years. They are more likely to be suspended again. They are disconnected from their classmates, and are more likely to drop out of school. They are more likely to have lower grades and lower graduation rates.
“She’s already been out of school enough,” one of the girl’s attorneys, Matt Ory, told the board on Nov. 5. “She is a victim.
“She,” he repeated, “is a victim.”
Martin, the superintendent, countered: “Sometimes in life we can be both victims and perpetrators.”
But the board was swayed. One member, Henry Lafont, said: “There’s a lot of things in that video that I don’t like. But I’m also trying to put into perspective what she’s been through all day.” Have her return to campus immediately. Her first day back at school was November 7th, although she will remain on probation until January 29th.
This means no dancing, no sports and no extracurricular activities. She has already missed basketball tryouts, which means she won’t be able to play this season, her father said. He finds the situation “heartbreaking.”
“I was hoping that she would make great friends, go to high school together and, you know, that would keep everyone out of trouble down the road,” said her father. “I think they ruined that.”
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.