“Imagine a girl waking up to find explicit photos and videos that look like her but are not her,” Dorota Mani told the Post.
That’s what happened to Mani’s 14-year-old daughter Francesca. In October, she discovered that her classmates at Westfield High School in Union County, New Jersey, had been circulating photos that appeared to show Mani nude.
However, the photo was not real. This was generated by the boys in the class using artificial intelligence “deepfake” technology.
All the culprit needed to do was take an innocent photo from Francesca’s social media and turn it into a fake nude using one of dozens of apps and websites.
This week, nude images of Taylor Swift flooded social media, exploding the ease with which obscene pornographic “deepfakes” can be created.
The perverse version of the world’s biggest pop star became so widespread that X (formerly Twitter) had to censor searches for her name to prevent innocent users from seeing the image. did.
And a new analysis by The Associated Press reveals that there is even more deepfake content out there. posted online this year higher than all other years in the past combined.
The issue was mentioned Wednesday at the Capitol by senators including Mark Zuckerberg, who runs Facebook and Instagram, Evan Spiegel, who heads Snapchat, and Linda Yaccarino of Company X. This happened only once, during a four-hour question and answer session with CEOs about child safety.
But Francesca was one of dozens of victims of deepfake porn in high school alone, her mother said. The problem suggests that it affects millions of American teenage girls on a regular basis.
Additionally, the images are not currently classified as child abuse images, so there is no federal law to prevent the images from being disseminated.
“A few bored and spoiled teenagers decided to have some fun at the expense of their classmates,” the mother said. She said, “There should be accountability and girls should understand that there is accountability as well.”
The school district said the number of people affected was “much fewer” than 30, but did not provide an exact number.
Mani, 44, thought she was doing everything she could to protect her daughter online, but she was blindsided by deepfake technology being used against her. .
“I’m an educated, knowledgeable middle-aged woman. I told my kids about Snapchat and TikTok,” she said. “But to be honest, I didn’t know you could create something like that with just one click.”
Mani, a mother of two, learned that her daughter was the victim when she received a call from the school, and local police contacted her and asked if she wanted to file a formal complaint with Francesca. .
But in the end, police told Manis and the families of other victims that they could find no New Jersey or federal law that would make deepfakes illegal, while the school announced new laws that explicitly criminalize sharing the images. rules were adopted.
Schools Superintendent Dr. Raymond Gonzalez told the Post that Westfield is one of the wealthiest towns in New Jersey. He wasn’t the only one dealing with this problem.
“Every school district is grappling with the challenges and implications of artificial intelligence,” he said.
“The Westfield Public School District has safety measures in place… [we] We will continue to strengthen our efforts by educating students and establishing clear guidelines to ensure that these new technologies are used responsibly. ”
Mani and Francesca are now pleading with Congress and other political leaders to take action, including a meeting scheduled for next week at the White House.
“We find that there is no law, no school AI policy, no state law, no federal law that protects us from it,” Mani told the Post. “We were just appalled at the way this situation was handled.
“Everyone wants to see us hurt and cry on the floor. This is not who we are. Girls should stand up for themselves and not just accept being victims. .”
Both parties are calling for criminal penalties for the distribution of deepfakes and legal protection for victims.
A mother and daughter have teamed up with state legislators in New Jersey to craft a bill that would make sharing deepfake porn a punishable crime and potentially punishable by prison time.
The state joins Texas, Virginia and New York, which have criminalized non-consensual deepfake pornography.
They are sponsoring a bipartisan bill in the Senate led by Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley that would make nonconsensual deepfakes illegal. Proposed Countermeasuresand a similar effort in the House by Democratic Rep. Joe Morrell, who represents Rochester, New York. How to prevent deepfakes of intimate images.
“Nobody, celebrities or ordinary Americans, should ever appear in AI porn,” Hawley said. “Innocent people have the right to defend their honor and to hold perpetrators accountable in court.”
At a press conference with Congresswoman Morrell in Washington, D.C., in January, Francesca said: What happened to me and my classmates is terrible, and we cannot just shrug it off and remain silent. ”
