According to police reports obtained by Designed via public record demand, two young boys from Miami, Florida, were detained in December for supposedly creating and sharing AI-generated nude images of male and female classmates without consent.
According to the arrest information, the guys, who are 13 and 14,” created the pictures of the individuals who were between the age of 12 and 13″”.
The Florida incident appears to be the first arrests and criminal prosecutions in the wake of alleged sharing of artificial intelligence ( AI)-generated naked images. Under a state laws passed in 2022, which makes it illegal to promote “any altered physical description” of a man without their consent, the lads were charged with third-degree felonies, which is the same amount of crimes as grand theft auto or false imprisonment.
One of the lads arrested’s parents did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. The other boy’s parent informed him that he had” no comment.” The state prosecutor handling the case and the policeman assigned to the case did not respond to requests for comment before the deadline for publication.
There have been several high-profile situations where juveniles reportedly created AI-generated nude photos of colleagues and shared them without permission as AI image-making devices have become more widely available. Despite the fact that police reports were filed, no arrests have been made in the officially reported cases at Beverly Vista Middle School in California, Westfield High School in New Jersey, and Issaquah High School in Washington. Officers at Issaquah High School opted not to file claims.
The two guys were suspended from Pinecrest Cove Academy in Miami for ten days after school officials learned of claims that they shared false nude photos without permission, according to the initial media reports from the Florida event that first surfaced in December. Numerous individuals began publicly urging the school to remove the lads after learning about the incident from the victims ‘ parents.
The event was traumatizing for all the families whose children were patients, according to Nadia Khan-Robers, the mother of one of the survivors, who spoke to NBC Miami in December. Our daughters do n’t feel at ease interacting with these boys in the same hallways, she said. One victim, who asked to remain anonymous, reported to the TV place,” I feel violated, I feel taken advantage of, and I feel used.”
This year, according to jail records obtained by WIRED, the incident was reported to police on December 6, 2023, and the two guys were detained on December 22. According to the records, the pair is accused of creating the false explicit images using” an artificial intelligence software.” The app’s title was not provided, and studies claim that the boys exchanged photos with each other.
” The incident was reported to a school executive,” according to the information, without specifying how or by whom it was reported. According to the information, the school administrator interviewed the survivors depicted in them after the superintendent “obtained editions of the improved images” who claimed they did not consent to the images being created.
The two guys charged with producing the photos were taken to the Juvenile Service Department “without incident” after their arrest, according to reports.
A few states have laws written on the books that specific artificial, unconcerned nude images. No national law specifically prohibits the exercise, but a group of US lawmakers recently introduced a bill to address the issue after Taylor Swift’s image was made and broadly distributed on X.
The kids were detained in accordance with a state law passed in 2022 that state politicians intended to stop harassment involving deep-fake graphics created using AI-powered tools.
People who fabricates false nude photos of a child would be in possession of child sexual abuse materials, or CSAM, according to Stephanie Cagnet Myron, a prosecutor in Florida who represents subjects of nonconsensually shared nude images. She asserts that because of their age, it’s possible that the two boys who are accused of creating and sharing the materials were not formally accused of CSAM possession.
There are a few crimes in particular that you can command in a situation, and you really need to figure out what has the best chance of winning and what has the best chance of succeeding, and if you include too many expenses, is it just going to conjure up the judge? added Cagnet Myron.
It’s “odd” that Florida’s punishment video laws, which predates the 2022 statute under which the boys were charged, simply declares the act a criminal while this circumstance represents a felony, according to Mary Anne Franks, a teacher at the George Washington University School of Law and a lawyer who has studied the problem of nonconsensual obvious imagery.
She says,” It is really strange that you impose heftier penalties for false nude images than for actual people,” she says.
Franks goes on to say that she does n’t think offenders should be incarcerated, especially not juveniles, even though she thinks distributing nonconsensual fake explicit images should be a criminal offense and serve as a deterrent effect.
” The first thing I think about is how fresh the victims are and concerned about the kind of impact on them,” Franks says. ” But then, I also [also] doubt whether or not hurling the book at children will really work here.”