Last month, a detective in a small town outside of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, invited dozens of high school girls and their parents to the police station to undertake a difficult task: one by one, the girls were asked to confirm that they were depicted in hundreds of AI-generated deepfake pornographic images seized by law enforcement.

In a series of back-to-back private meetings, Detective Laurel Bair of the Susquehanna Regional Police Department slid each image out from under the folder’s cover, so only the girl’s face was shown, unless the families specifically requested to see the entire uncensored image.

“It made me a lot more upset after I saw the pictures because it made them so much more real for me,” one Lancaster victim, now 16, told Forbes. “They’re very graphic and they’re very realistic,” the mother said. “There’s no way someone who didn’t know her wouldn’t think: ‘that’s her naked,’ and that’s the scary part.” There were more than 30 images of her daughter.

The photos were part of a cache of images allegedly taken from 60 girls’ public social media accounts by two teenage boys, who then created 347 AI-generated deepfake pornographic images and videos, according to the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office. The two boys have now been criminally charged with 59 counts of “sexual abuse of children,” and 59 counts of “posession of child pornography,” among other charges, including “possession of obscene materials depicting a minor.”

  • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    So you would rather they get off unscathed instead?

    In a similar deepfake porn case at a school in New Jersey, no charges were brought, and the alleged perpetrator does not appear to have suffered any academic or legal penalties. Dorotha Mani, a mother of one of the New Jersey victims, outlined her frustration with the leadership at her daughter’s school in approximately three pages of written testimony to Congress published in March. In that document, she called Westfield High School’s tepid response as “not only disheartening but also dangerous, as it fosters an environment where female students are left to feel victimized while male students escape necessary accountability.”

    • Chozo@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      So you would rather they get off unscathed instead?

      Why would this be the only other option?