Middle Schoolers Arrested for Making AI Nudes of Classmates

The victims were reportedly aged between 12 and 13.

Extremely Grim

In what strongly appears to be a first-of-its-kind criminal case, Wired reports that two Miami teenagers were arrested for allegedly creating AI-deepfaked nudes of their underage classmates.

According to police reports obtained by Wired, the boys are aged 13 and 14, and the classmates targeted by the nonconsensually-generated imagery are "between ages of 12 and 13." The records also reportedly note that the offenders used "an artificial intelligence application" to create the fake nude images, though the app itself was unnamed.

The legal consequences for the images' creators could be quite serious. Per Wired, the boys have been charged with third-degree felonies by way of a 2022 Florida law illegalizing the promotion of "any altered sexual depiction of an identifiable person, without the consent of the identifiable person."

Rapidly Changing Worlds

This isn't the first time that this incident made headlines. News of the harrowing middle school scandal first broke back in December, when NBC Miami reported that the boys in question had been suspended for creating the invasive and traumatizing imagery of their schoolmates.

"My face was used without my consent," one of the underage victims told the local outlet. "It makes me feel violated, I feel taken advantage [of] and I feel used."

"It has been traumatizing for all of the families," added Nadia Khan-Roberts, one of the young victims' mothers.

According to Wired, the police records note that the imagery was first reported to law enforcement officials on December 6, and arrests were made later that month.

It's an incredibly grim story. We live in a world where almost everyone's face is online, even those of children, and easily accessible AI tools make it disturbingly easy to exploit kids — particularly young girls — who have been thrown into a terrifying new social and digital landscape emerging in middle and high school as a result.

And as similar stories crop up not just in middle and high schools around the country but around the world, what happens in this Miami case could shape how other cases are handled and prosecuted — and what consequences might look like for the perpetrators down the line.

More on AI and deepfakes: Police Investigating AI-Generated Nudes of New Jersey High Schoolers