When a 13-year-old girl in Louisiana began to feel the sting of rumors, she thought she was dealing with a typical school fight. What unfolded was a crisis born from artificial intelligence.
AI-Generated Images Spark Rumors
On August 26, a 13-year-old girl and two friends walked into the guidance office at 7 a.m. with one nearly in tears. They were seeking moral support after hearing about nude images that had appeared on Snapchat. The Associated Press did not name the victim because she is a minor and because AP does not normally name victims of sexual crimes.
A week-long investigation in Thibodaux, about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans, uncovered eight AI-generated nude images of female middle-school students and two adults. The district and sheriff’s office released a joint statement describing the images as “Full nudes with her face put on them,” a description given by the victim’s father, Joseph Daniels.
The technology that creates such deepfakes has moved from a niche skill to a tool that can be used by anyone with a phone. “Until recently, it took some technical skill to make realistic deepfakes. Technology now makes it easy to pluck a photo off social media, ‘nudify’ it and create a viral nightmare for an unsuspecting classmate,” Daniels said in multiple news outlets.
School Response and Investigation
The school’s guidance counselor and a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the campus tried to locate the images. The deputy searched social media but found nothing, and the principal, Danielle Coriell, expressed doubt that the pictures even existed. Coriell said, “Kids lie a lot. They lie about all kinds of things. They blow lots of things out of proportion on a daily basis. In 17 years, they do it all the time. So to my knowledge, at 2 o’clock when I checked again, there were no pictures.”
The district followed all its protocols for reporting misconduct, Superintendent Jarod Martin said in a statement. He added that a “one-sided story” had been presented that fails to illustrate the case’s “totality and complex nature.”
Despite the lack of evidence, the girls accused a classmate and two students from other schools of creating and spreading the nudes on Snapchat and possibly TikTok. The principal’s investigation was described as “cold” because no student took responsibility.
Bus Incident and Disciplinary Actions
At the end of the school day, the 13-year-old stepped onto the Sixth Ward Middle School bus. A classmate was showing one of the AI-generated images to a friend. The girl’s anger escalated; she slapped the boy, who shrugged it off. She hit him again, asked aloud, “Why am I the only one doing this?” Two classmates joined her, and she punched and stomped on him.
A video of the fight was posted on Facebook. “Overwhelming social media sentiment was one of outrage and a demand that the students involved in the fight be held accountable,” the district and sheriff’s office said in a joint statement released in November.
The girl had no prior disciplinary record. The school expelled her for 89 school days (a full semester) and sent her to an alternative school. She said the boy she and her friends suspected of creating the images was not sent to the alternative school. Her attorneys allege he avoided school discipline altogether.
Legal Charges and School Discipline
On the day of the girl’s disciplinary hearing, three weeks after the fight, the first boy was charged with 10 counts of unlawful dissemination of images created by artificial intelligence under a new Louisiana state law. A second boy was charged in December with identical charges. Neither was identified publicly because of their ages.
The girl faced no charges because of what the sheriff’s office described as the “totality of the circumstances.” At the disciplinary hearing, the principal refused to answer questions from the girl’s attorneys about the type of school discipline the boy would face. The district said federal student privacy laws prohibit it from discussing individual students’ disciplinary records.
Gregory Miller, an attorney for the girl, said he has no knowledge of any school discipline for the classmate accused of sharing the images.
Impact on the Victim and Community
After being sent to the alternative school, the girl began skipping meals. Her father said she was unable to concentrate and completed none of the school’s online work for several days before she was placed in therapy for depression and anxiety. “She’s already been out of school enough,” her father told the board. “She just felt like she was victimized multiple times – by the pictures and by the school not believing her and by them putting her on a bus and then expelling her for her actions.”
The board held another hearing on November 5. One member, Henry Lafont, said, “There are a lot of things in that video that I don’t like. But I’m also trying to put into perspective what she went through all day.” The board allowed her to return to campus on November 7, but she will remain on probation until January 29, with no dances, sports, or extracurricular activities. She missed basketball tryouts, meaning she won’t be able to play this season, her father said, calling the situation “heartbreaking.”
Matt Ory, the girl’s attorney, said, “She’s already been out of school enough.” He repeated, “She is a victim.”
Sergio Alexander, a research associate at Texas Christian University, said, “When we ignore the digital harm, the only moment that becomes visible is when the victim finally breaks.” Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University, noted that “Most schools are ‘just kind of burying their heads in the sand, hoping that this isn’t happening.'”
Key Takeaways
- AI-generated nude images of a 13-year-old girl and her friends sparked a school crisis in Louisiana.
- The school’s investigation found no evidence of the images, yet the girl was expelled and sent to an alternative school.
- Two boys were charged with unlawful dissemination of AI-created images under a new state law, while the girl faced no charges.
The incident highlights how rapidly evolving AI technology can create deepfakes that devastate students’ lives and how schools and law enforcement may struggle to keep pace with new forms of cyberbullying and harassment.
