When Ellis, a 14-year-old from Texas, woke up one October morning with several missed calls and texts, they were all about the same thing: nude images of her circulating on social media. That she had not actually taken the pictures didn't make a difference, as artificial intelligence makes so-called 'deepfakes' more and more realistic. The images of Ellis and a friend, also a victim, were lifted from Instagram, their faces then placed on naked bodies of other people.
Other students — all girls — were also targeted, with the composite photos shared with other classmates on Snapchat. 'It looked real, like the bodies looked like real bodies,' she told AFP. 'And I remember being really, really scared... I've never done anything of that sort.' As AI has boomed, so has deepfake pornography, with hyperrealistic images and videos created with minimal effort and money — leading to scandals and harassment at multiple high schools in the United States as administrators struggle to respond amid a lack of federal legislation banning the practic