On a school night in early December, a freshman at Radnor High School in Pennsylvania wrote in Snapchat messages to his friends that his parents took his phone away.\u201cwhy,\u201d one replied.\u201cthe app,\u201d he answered. \u201co shi. did you admit to what it was or just the money,\u201d another asked. Just the money, the first boy replied.\u201cBro u would literally be dead rn if ur parents found out what u were doing in ts\u201d\u00a0He was sending these messages from a school-issued device, he said. \u201cI dropped 250 on that hoe,\u201d he replied. \u201cWorth every penny.\u201d\u00a0He spent that money on a subscription to an app from Apple\u2019s App Store, called Movely, and allegedly used it to put five of his female classmates\u2019 faces onto nude bodies and make sexual images of them. The boy who used the app and made the videos didn\u2019t show up to school the next morning. But the girls did. And so did his friends.\u00a0\u201cThe boys are defending him, and they’re now saying that they didn’t see anything, but they did,\u201d one of the girls texted her mom. \u201cIt’s not okay.\u201d\u00a0Radnor is ranked one of the top high schools in the state. It has a little more than 1,000 kids enrolled in the 2026 school year. The school district has had policies in place concerning bullying, harassment, and sexual violence for years, and Pennsylvania law criminalized malicious deepfakes in 2024. In 2025, a man was charged on over 30 felony counts of possession of child sexual abuse material after investigators found more than two dozen files of AI-generated content depicting minors on his phone.\u00a0Despite all this, Radnor\u2019s administration failed students in the days and weeks after it learned about the abuse, according to parents who spoke to 404 Media, email exchanges between parents and mandated reporters in the aftermath, conflicting narratives between the administration and the police department, and spotlight on the school from governor Josh Shapiro.\u201cCandidly, I just want this to not happen again to anybody else,\u201d Audrey Greenberg, a parent of one of the victims who has been speaking publicly to the press and at board meetings, told me.\u00a0The incident also started a new debate for the school: Whether what happens on kids\u2019 phones while off campus and outside of school hours is within the purview of the school\u2019s responsibility, especially under Title IX requirements.\u201cMy daughter would not know this other boy if they were not in school together,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cThe entire school knows about it. She’s been calling me for weeks on end to come home early. She can’t concentrate, it’s affecting her every day at school.\u201d\u00a0In the days following the incident, the school offered to let the girls leave class early and eat lunch alone, isolating them further from their peers and studies. Meanwhile, parents and advocates have shown up to every school board meeting and organized events with state representatives and lawmakers to try to ensure this doesn\u2019t happen again, to their girls or anyone else.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the morning of December 4, five ninth grade girls, all 14 or 15 years old, showed up for class at Radnor High School. By 8 a.m.\u2014the sun had been up for less than an hour\u2014it felt like the entire school already heard what happened the night before. A fellow freshman boy allegedly created AI-generated sexually explicit videos of the girls using an app, and sent them to his friends. From there, the videos and gossip spread from teenager to teenager, school to school, until they made their way back to the girls whose faces were in the deepfakes.\ud83d\udca1Do you have experience with deepfake harassment in schools? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404 Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.For weeks prior, parents of the girls say, the boys creating the images were showing them off at lunch tables at Radnor. When kids started sharing and talking about them on the night of December 3, someone reported the images to Pennsylvania\u2019s Safe2Say hotline for cyberbullying, shooting plans or threats, and other violent activity.The images originated from one boy, who used an app called Movely, the girls and their parents believe. The app is similar to dozens hosted in the Apple and Google app stores and advertised on Instagram and TikTok that promise to create AI images and videos of users as superheroes, animals, or influencers; behind a paywall, however, users could edit photos and videos with text prompts.\u00a0Movely\u2019s capabilities to make deepfakes were tested by the Tech Transparency Project in their latest report released in April: \u201cTo test this feature, TTP uploaded an image of a woman in a white T-shirt standing next to a river. After using the selection tool to highlight the woman\u2019s shirt, we entered the prompt \u2018topless.\u2019 The app immediately generated four versions of the woman nude from the waist up. It required a paid subscription to download the AI images.\u201d Apple told 404 Media it removed the apps mentioned in TTP\u2019s report, and Movely is not available in the App Store as of writing.\u00a0No one I spoke to for this story had viewed the images in question directly. The images are of minors, and would likely be considered child sexual abuse material under federal and state law. Viewing, sharing, or storing AI-generated child sexual abuse material is illegal. This has made the process of understanding the harms, and responding properly, confusing for school administrators, who were seemingly caught unprepared for this technology that has existed at a consumer level for more than eight years and bears little difference from the non-consensual intimate imagery that\u2019s plagued young girls and teenagers since the invention of the camera. Because the images aren\u2019t \u201creal,\u201d authorities grapple with how to handle them. But the harms they perpetuate are extremely real. The girls allegedly depicted in them are silenced, isolated, and punished in numerous inexplicit ways by the people meant to be protecting them.\u2018I Want to Make You Immortal:\u2019 How One Woman Confronted Her Deepfakes Harasser\u201cAfter discovering this content, I\u2019m not going to lie\u2026 there are times it made me not want to be around any more either,\u201d she said. \u201cI literally felt buried.\u201d404 MediaSamantha ColeRadnor leadership initially called the alleged child sexual abuse material tearing through their district \u201crumors.\u201d In an email sent to parents on December 8, days after they went viral within the school, Radnor High School Principal Joseph MacNamara wrote:\u00a0\u201cDear Radnor High School Parents and Guardians, I am writing to address concerns and rumors regarding an AI-generated video that was reported to depict several of our students in an inappropriate manner. We understand how upsetting and serious this situation is, and we want to assure you that we are treating it with the highest level of urgency and care. Please know that all families of students who may have been affected have already been contacted and provided information about available supports.\u201d\u00a0MacNamara continued, writing that \u201cas soon as this matter was brought to our attention,\u201d they contacted Radnor Township Police Department, and said that RPD is \u201cactively involved.\u201d\u00a0Radnor Township Police Department declined to comment for this story, and declined to confirm or deny whether Radnor in fact worked \u201cclosely\u201d with the police department following the incident. \u201cWe are referring all media to the Delaware County DA\u2019s Office,\u201d Radnor Township Superintendent of Police Christopher Flanagan told me in an email. District Attorney Tanner Rouse did not respond to my request for comment.School administrators offered a series of \u201csupportive measures\u201d for the victims, according to emails viewed by 404 Media. These included permission to leave class early for a few weeks following the incident, access to the student counselor and social worker, and an open door policy from Assistant Principal Gabriel Presley, who would \u201creview any requested accommodation related to specific classes or assignments,\u201d according to an email sent from Radnor\u2019s head of HR to parents. In effect, the girls had the option to cut their own learning short\u2014and not much else from the school.The girls also weren\u2019t sure what repercussions their bully would face, which added to the trauma they felt. Administrators sent conflicting messages to parents about the situation.\u00a0On January 14, Radnor Township police informed parents of the victims that the boy who made the images was charged with \u201csummary harassment.\u201d Two days later, on January 16, the Radnor community received an email signed by Radnor Township School District Superintendent Kenneth Batchelor, Flanagan, and MacNamara that claims no crime was committed and during an investigation, no images were found.In that email, Flanagan, Batchelor, and MacNamara informed parents that Radnor Police \u201chave concluded their investigation\u201d and found \u201cduring a small gathering off school grounds and outside of school hours, students used a personal cell phone to copy publicly available images of other students. The student used an app that animates images, making them appear to move and dance. On the\u202fday the high school administration first heard of the rumors and learned of the alleged images, they\u202fimmediately\u202fbegan investigating, contacted the police, and reached out to all parents and students involved.\u201d\u00a0They wrote that the police and county forensic teams investigated the situation, and \u201cno evidence shared with law enforcement depicted anything inappropriate or any other related crime. Individuals involved have cooperated with the investigation allowing searches of personal technology. All school district technology was also searched. After a thorough investigation, the alleged images were never discovered.\u201d\u00a0Schools Are Failing to Protect Students From Non-Consensual Deepfakes, Report ShowsA survey of teachers, students and parents showed that schools are unprepared for non-consensual imagery, AI generated or otherwise, spreading throughout communities of young people.404 MediaSamantha ColeParents of the girls were shocked. Their daughters had spent the previous weeks in and out of school, dealing with the trauma of their images being sexualized and shared rampantly, as well as more harassment and bullying associated with the fallout. They were trying to get back to normal, but at Radnor, they watched their harasser high five his friends in the hallways. For some of them, focusing on their studies became impossible. Some started therapy. Some just wanted to move on and never think about it again. And here, six weeks later, the police chief, school district superintendent, and high school principal were claiming nothing happened.\u00a0On January 23, a week after Radnor administrators and the superintendent of police sent the email claiming no crimes were committed, the Radnor Township Police Department posted a notice to its Facebook page noting that a crime had indeed happened:\u201cAfter being alerted in December of 2025 of the possible use of Al to generate non-consensual sexualized imagery of multiple juveniles that occurred within Radnor Township, the Radnor Police Department conducted an investigation in collaboration with the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office and specifically the Delaware County ICAC Detective Division. As a result of the investigation, a juvenile offender was charged with the crime of harassment for their conduct. Please be alerted to the dangers of Al and that criminal use of it will be investigated and charged appropriately.\u201d\u00a0Rouse also sent this statement to Greenberg and another parent, Morgan Dorfman, writing that it came in response to \u201csome well-thought out requests by you all.\u201d\u00a0\u201cWe believe this is almost exactly what Ms. Greenburg[sic] had envisioned and thoroughly in line with Ms. Dorfman’s wishes,\u201d Rouse wrote in the email. \u201cWhile it does not mention credibility explicitly, clearly the fact that charges were filed (correctly) implies that the girls were believed. Again, we are terribly sorry for what your daughters have endured and hope that this grants them some solace that law enforcement took their claims seriously, and that they can begin to resume life as they knew it before this incident.\u201dDistrict Attorney Rouse did not respond to my requests for comment.\u00a0In a January 28 email, Juvenile Division Deputy District Attorney Katie Magee wrote to the girls\u2019 parents: \u201cI can confirm that the Radnor Youth Aid Panel (YAP) has held their meeting with the juvenile,\u201d referring to the boy who allegedly made the images. \u201cAs YAP stated, their resolutions with the juvenile are confidential. However, I can advise all parties that the YAP, in addition to their own resolutions, did impose the two requirements that the District Attorney\u2019s office requested. The juvenile will have to attend the internet safety class and, effective immediately, there is a stay away requirement until March 27, 2026. He was advised that on school grounds it is his responsibility to remove himself if he finds himself in the presence of one of the girls. To be clear, this is not a protection from abuse order but rather a resolution crafted to allow all parties to be as comfortable as possible during the school day. The juvenile and his father indicated he will not be attending non-school events; however, he was advised to use common sense and remove himself if he finds himself in the vicinity of the girls.\u201d\u00a0\u201cPolicies are pointless if you’re not going to honestly inform the community when they are violated”School administrations around the country are not prepared for \u201cnudify\u201d apps and the chaos and trauma they\u2019re creating for students. A 2024 report by the Center for Democracy and Technology found that 40 percent of students and 29 percent of teachers said they knew of an explicit deepfake shared in the past school year, and 71 percent of teachers reported that students who were caught sharing sexually explicit, non-consensual deepfakes were referred to law enforcement, expelled from school, or suspended for more than three days. Also in 2024, a report found that one in 10 minors said their friends used AI to generate sexually explicit images of their peers. The first arrest of this kind happened in 2023, when two boys, ages 13 and 14, were arrested and charged with third-degree felonies for making AI-generated nude images of male and female classmates.<\/p>\n
The cascading events in the weeks and months following the incident are part of a pattern that\u2019s repeated over and over at schools around the country.\u00a0Susanna Gibson, founder of MyOwn Image, a nonprofit focused on technology-facilitated violence and image-based sexual abuse, told me she wasn\u2019t surprised when she first heard what was happening at Radnor. \u201cWe receive reports like this regularly, and the pattern is consistent,\u201d she told me in an email. \u201cImages of girls are created using nudification apps or generative AI, they spread quickly through peer networks, and then the school is alerted. What happens next is also predictable: it gets treated as a discipline issue or dismissed as rumor, and the broader community is given a softened version of events.\u201d\u00a0This week, enforcement of the Take It Down Act went into effect, which requires site administrators to remove abusive imagery within 48 hours of when they\u2019re reported. In schools, however, images spread from cellphone to cellphone, and the harm perpetuates even when the images aren\u2019t traceable or visible to the victims.\u00a0\u201cThe response to the victims and their families also reflects patterns we see in other forms of sexual abuse,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cGirls are asked to adjust their behavior (use side entrances, avoid certain spaces) rather than centering accountability on the individuals who caused the harm.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
On February 10, nearly two dozen parents of Radnor students and allies from the community showed up to that night\u2019s school board policy meeting. Batchelor, who is typically at most board meetings, wasn\u2019t in attendance. On that night\u2019s agenda: a discussion about policy revisions to address deepfake harassment.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIn the January 16th email, it said that this conduct may rise to the level of a crime. And it did,\u201d Morgan Dorfman, a parent of one of the girls targeted, said to the board. \u201cA crime occurred here. We have a policy. The policy is harassment. The response by the school for level four violations is clearly stated. You guys thought this all out. You’ve redlined it. You’ve done this.\u201dIn the weeks that followed, parents kept showing up to board meetings to express frustration about what they see as failures of enforcement of existing policy, and communication failures. They were particularly concerned about that January 16 email in which the school said no crime had occurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPolicies are pointless if you’re not going to honestly inform the community when they are violated,\u201d Dorfman said at an April 21 board meeting. \u201cThe January 16th email that was sent to this community matters. It shaped how parents understood what happened. It shaped how students interpreted the seriousness of it. And it sent a message about what this district believes and what it’s willing to act on.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Morgan Dorfman speaking at the April 21 school board meeting.
\n Dorfman continued: \u201cIt focused on uncertainty instead of accountability. And in doing so, it sent the wrong message because the message that was received was this: That unless something is seen in school, it doesn’t count. That if something is deleted, it never happened. That is not how you protect students, because this was never just about technology. It was about the creation of the videos, the decisions and the steps he took to find and download an app, to pay for it, to select photos of his friends, these girls, to generate sexualized videos of them without their consent, and then share them with others as if the girls were something to be passed around. That is the conduct. And the impact of that conduct was inside your school. So the question becomes, why wasn’t the email grounded in that reality? Why wasn’t the community told the truth?\u201dIn late April, the school board adopted new language directly addressing deepfakes to be added to Radnor\u2019s policies. In its harassment policy and bullying policy: \u201cThe non-consensual use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to create, modify, distribute, or solicit sexualized, indecent, or intimate content involving another person is strictly prohibited and constitutes sexual harassment.\u201d They also added language that points to Pennsylvania\u2019s public school code when bullying occurs outside of school grounds: \u201ca school entity shall not be prohibited from defining bullying in such a way as to encompass acts that occur outside a school setting\u201d if those acts constitute bullying defined as \u201can intentional electronic, written, verbal or physical act\u201d that\u2019s directed at another student, that\u2019s severe, persistent or pervasive, and that has the effect of interfering with students\u2019 educations, creating a threatening environment, or disrupting orderly operations.\u00a0This was an important addition: From the start, the question of whether the school was responsible for investigating the incident, and especially initiating a Title IX investigation, considering the inciting incident happened \u201cduring a small gathering off school grounds and outside of school hours,\u201d as Batchelor put it in the January 16 email, was hotly debated.\u00a0At the May 5 board meeting, members introduced the policy changes. The tone had shifted from previous meetings: the board expressed appreciation for the parents and focused on trauma-informed responses for the future. \u201cI just wanted to correct any misunderstandings, because in particular just because we say that sexualized generative- non-consensual generative AI could be cyber bullying doesn’t mean it can’t also violate another policy,\u201d board member Jannie Lau said in the meeting. \u201cWhich it does, because we revised our harassment policy to say that that kind of generative AI is per se sexual harassment that does trigger a Title IX review.\u201d\u00a0Radnor administrators and the board did not respond to my questions about whether a Title IX investigation was underway currently for the deepfakes harassment of the five girls.\u00a0In that meeting, Lau explained the reasoning for adding language to existing policies on bullying and harassment, as opposed to carving out a separate artificial intelligence policy. \u201cIt’s almost irrelevant how you did it, what tools you used, whether you did it in person,\u201d Lau said. \u201cFor me, it’s really important to me that our policies are flexible enough to react and address those situations, and we’re not constantly playing catch-up… I think we can communicate our stance and make it clear that we take this seriously without a standalone policy. If anything, I think it’s much more reflective of our proactive approach rather than a reactive approach.\u201dBatchelor mentioned in the meeting that he and Scott Hand, Radnor\u2019s Director of Technology Innovation and Instructional Design, had talked \u201cat length\u201d about the opportunity to examine the district\u2019s policies, and mentioned that Hand might bring in outside experts. \u201cI just want to thank the board too because as you mentioned in the beginning, the wheels of policy work move often very slowly,\u201d Batchelor said. \u201cI want to thank the admin team for moving so quickly to take the feedback, to listen to the feedback, to look at how we as a district can do better.\u201d\u00a0Greenberg was the only in-person attendee to offer public comment at that meeting. \u201cI just want to say thank you so much for your empathy and understanding,\u201d she said. \u201cIt’s been an incredibly difficult time for our family and for the other victim’s families and your comments tonight were particularly resonating.\u201d She reiterated that the communications from administrators, specifically the January 16 email, were \u201cincredibly damaging,\u201d and asked the board to consider addressing how the administration communicates with the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Audrey Greenberg at the May 5 school board meeting.
\n \u201cCalling the event rumors and speculation when a crime occurred was almost worse than the crime,\u201d Greenberg said at the close of the meeting. \u201cTo say these images move and dance, I mean, for crying out loud, this is pornographic material. This is not Mickey Mouse. This is not Disneyland. We don’t have Snuffleupagus moving around on a stage.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, I spoke to Greenberg again. She acknowledged that the policy changes that added AI were positive steps, but also found them to be redundant to existing harassment and bullying guidelines. \u201cFrom my perspective, the bigger issue really is whether the district is going to actually implement them differently than they did before. Because clearly, sexual harassment and cyber bullying were part of what happened in this incident, and they didn’t seem to apply the policy as it was,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cWhat families need now is to know that we got the better wording, but we need the clear administrative regulations and timelines and investigative pathways, so that there are trauma-informed support and accountability, as opposed to the school minimizing and miscommunicating what happened.\u201d\u00a0On May 7, Dorfman and Greenberg hosted a series of panels in nearby King of Prussia called \u201cAI Deepfakes and Our Kids: What Every Parent Needs to Know.\u201d Free tickets were snatched up days before the event. I passed the local news stations\u2019 reporters unloading their cameras from satellite trucks as I walked inside. Radnor has been in the regional spotlight for months, with the community and journalists examining its response to this crisis. Now, the governor\u2019s office, several lawmakers, and world-renowned experts in child sexual abuse material and harassment including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were in attendance and paying attention. Greenberg told me that in a meeting with Batchelor just days after that traumatizing school day on December 4, she and her husband threatened to take the story of what was happening at Radnor to the media if he and the administration didn\u2019t take it seriously. She told me she recalled him responding with a dare: “Do it. Call the [Philadelphia] Inquirer.”\u00a0Batchelor arrived at the auditorium shortly before the program began. He declined to speak on the record to the TV reporters who asked for his comments, and took a seat in the center of the last row.\u00a0Throughout the night, whenever one of the speakers brought up holding Big Tech accountable, and specifically Apple and Google\u2019s app stores, the crowd applauded.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI think it’s a very valid question to ask why schools are so unprepared.”But something I don\u2019t typically hear posed as a solution to deepfakes repeatedly came up also, and elicited thoughtful hums or scattered clapping whenever someone said it: Parents have a responsibility to talk to their children about sex, the internet, and consent. Specifically, parents of boys play a role in how their sons treat women, and how they respond when one of their friends is unkind or\u2014in this case\u2014commits a sex-based crime.\u00a0It\u2019s been more than eight years since AI-generated, non-consensual sexual abuse imagery first hit the mainstream. But the problem has gotten exponentially worse. One county over and three years earlier, in Lancaster, two 14 year old boys created 59 child sex abuse images using AI, some of which depicted their classmates. Like Radnor, Lancaster Day School received a tip about the images through Safe2Say. Lancaster Day School \u201cparted ways\u201d with its head of the school Matt Micciche and board president Angela Ang-Alhadeff stepped down after parents of the victims filed a lawsuit against the school in 2024 regarding its handling of the incident. A story by the Agence France-Presse published in Fortune reported that a mother of one of the Lancaster girls targeted said she and other parents were brought into a detective\u2019s office and were confronted with a stack of printed images \u201ca foot and a half high\u201d depicting their children. \u201cI had to see pictures of my daughter,\u201d she said. \u201cIf someone looked, they would think it\u2019s real, so that\u2019s even more damaging.\u201dSchools, detectives, and police don\u2019t seem to know what to do when students create AI-generated child sexual abuse of their peers, despite this being a well-documented, highly-publicized problem for years. In 2024, 404 Media reported that administrators at Issaquah High School in suburban Seattle failed to notify police for three days after girls at the school were targeted, with police narratives obtained by 404 Media indicating that law enforcement found out about what was happening from parents, not officials or mandatory reporters at the school.And in the Council Rock School District, also in Pennsylvania, middle school girls \u201creported that classmates had created explicit AI-generated images,\u201d and administrators were slow to report the incident to police, according to the Bucks County Independence. \u201cTwo juvenile boys were ultimately charged with unlawful dissemination of sexually explicit material by a minor, according to the Bucks County District Attorney\u2019s Office,\u201d the Independence reported. \u201cParents allege the district failed to promptly inform families or initiate a Title IX investigation.\u201d\u00a0The problem of deepfakes in schools is getting worse. But Kristin Woelfel, who serves as policy counsel on the Center for Democracy and Technology\u2019s Equity in Civic Technology team, told me that parents are at least more aware of the problem than they were in previous years. \u201cLast year parents were significantly less aware than students and teachers of any issues related to deepfakes or NCII [non-consensual intimate imagery],\u201d she told me in a call. \u201cI think that’s sort of like a positive development, and I’m sure the reason why is because a lot of people came forward with their stories, and there was a lot of reporting on it in the last year or two.\u201d\u00a0In 2024, CDT published a report based on nationally representative surveys of 6th-12th grade public school teachers and parents, and 9th-12th grade students, and found that 40 percent of students and 29 percent of teachers said they knew of an explicit deepfake depicting people from their school being shared in the past school year. According to that report, 71 percent of teachers reported that students caught sharing AI-generated abuse material were referred to law enforcement, expelled from school, or suspended for more than three days.\u00a0Passing off a child to law enforcement doesn\u2019t change a school\u2019s obligation to its students, or its obligations under Title IX to investigate it, Woelfel said. Schools are failing to prevent future incidents, facilitating severe discipline via law enforcement, and then failing to support victims, creating a cycle that repeats itself. \u201cContact with law enforcement increases somebody’s likelihood of entering the school to prison pipeline. Similarly, young girls who are victims of sexual abuse are more likely to enter the school to prison pipeline,\u201d she said. \u201cSo when we don’t prevent the conduct, and we don’t support somebody after it happens, but the one thing we’re really good at is severe discipline… It just doesn’t really seem like the issue is going to get any better, or that anybody’s really benefiting from that.\u201d\u2018The Most Dejected I\u2019ve Ever Felt:\u2019 Harassers Made Nude AI Images of Her, Then Started an OnlyFansKylie Brewer isn\u2019t unaccustomed to harassment online. But when people started using Grok-generated nudes of her on an OnlyFans account, it reached another level.404 MediaSamantha ColeTech Transparency Project Director Katie Paul told me that the risks to kids go both ways: victims often experience mental health crises, and the boys downloading and using these apps to create abuse imagery likely don\u2019t understand they\u2019re committing a serious crime. The apps used to create these images are so easily available, and officially offered by Apple in the App Store, which markets itself as \u201cthe most trusted\u201d app store and Apple claims it reviews every app update. The apps are advertised on TikTok and Instagram, pushed onto teenagers\u2019 screens and algorithmically offered to appeal to young men and boys.\u00a0\u201cI don’t want to make it seem like the boys are victims here, but I think that let’s remember these are kids and their grasp of the broader legal mechanisms around this,\u201d Paul told me in a call. \u201cWe’re still trying to teach older members of Congress about the laws related to tech, so we can’t expect a 15 year old to be totally aware of what they’re getting into when they’re doing that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tip Jar<\/p>\n
At the May 7 event, Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday said the technology is \u201cmoving so fast, our criminal laws really haven’t been able to keep up with it the way I’m going to say we would like to.\u201d There has been some legislative progress: Last month, the Minnesota Senate passed what could be the country\u2019s first law banning \u201cnudification\u201d apps. The bill would let survivors sue app owners for damages, and impose a $500,000 fine per violation from the attorney general. And in Pennsylvania, a new bill, HB2252, would change the current statute\u2019s \u201cintent\u201d requirement for adult targets of sexually explicit deepfakes, which says this content is only a crime if the person acts with intent to harass, annoy, or alarm.\u201cThat doesn\u2019t reflect how these crimes actually happen. People do this for so many other reasons: social status, entertainment, money, sexual gratification, attention,\u201d Gibson told me. \u201cThe current narrow intent standard creates a huge loophole,\u201d she said, where people can claim the images were shared as a joke amongst friends, or for sexual gratification. The current statute also limits protections to cases involving a current or former intimate partner. \u201cThat excludes many, many people who commit these crimes, especially in cases involving peers, classmates, or strangers,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cOur bill removes that requirement entirely.\u201d HB2252 passed unanimously in a House Judiciary Committee vote earlier this month.But again, it\u2019s been eight years since the consumer-level technological breakthrough of deepfakes alone. And the existence of that technology has never changed the core of the issue, which is ownership of women\u2019s bodies, sexual shame, and the ways we blame women and girls for their own trauma.Woelfel told me in a call that she often thinks about how targets of non-consensual intimate imagery abuse are blamed, or told they shouldn\u2019t have shared an image, posted a photo, or attempted to have a public life if they didn\u2019t want to be abused. \u201cI think it’s a very valid question to ask why schools are so unprepared,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cIt’s always sort of been something that you could attribute to a \u2018moral failing\u2019 of the victim\u2014unfairly, obviously. But you know, with deepfakes, I really have to wonder if the reason people think this is new is because you can’t blame somebody for their own suffering,\u201d Woelfel said. \u201cI have to wonder if the reason why it feels new, and why people feel so bewildered by it is because it can happen to literally anybody: young, old, high-profile figure or not. You can’t blame somebody for it anymore, and you never should have in the first place.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"