A private school in Lancaster, PA, has been shut down over a deepfake AI nude photo scandal. Parents say the school knew about the scandal and didn’t take the necessary steps to report the images to authorities. The parents demanded that school leaders either resign or face a lawsuit pursuing criminal penalties against them. Classes at the school were canceled on November 18, although classes have since resumed. The scandal highlights one of the growing thorny legal issues that surrounds artificial intelligence.

The Lancaster Country Day School is a private school with about 600 students in PreK through 12th grade. In November 2023, a male high school student allegedly started using an online AI program to make explicit deepfake nude photos of his female classmates. The AI software superimposed the girls’ faces on explicit nude bodies that were not real. The student was then allegedly distributing the images to other people in the school with his cell phone.

The incident was first reported by a student to the school’s “Safe2Say Something” web portal, which is run by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office. So, the Head of School Matt Micciche knew about the scandal a year ago when it first started, but never did the mandatory reporting that is necessary when suspicion of child abuse is taking place in a school setting.

The student in question allegedly created deepfake nudes of more than 50 girls before police arrested him in August and seized his cell phone. The arrest wasn’t good enough for the parents, however. They note that the Head of School had a responsibility to report the scandal a year ago and did nothing, which allowed more girls to be victimized.

The parents filed a court summons threatening to sue unless the school’s leaders resigned within 48 hours. Two days after the deadline had passed, Micciche and the school board’s president, Angela Ang-Alhadeff, both resigned. The parents are still threatening to push forward with the lawsuit, however. The fact that the school officials dragged their feet in reporting the scandal and waited two extra days before they resigned infuriated them.
Here’s where it becomes a sticky legal issue, however. Micciche and Ang-Alhadeff clearly broke the law and deserved to lose their jobs over the scandal. Whether they’ll eventually be prosecuted is unknown.

But what about the student who was arrested? Exactly what crime should he be charged with?

These were not real nude photos of his classmates. Many of the girls were underage, but the images superimposed their faces on the bodies of adult nude women. Do the images count as child sex abuse even though they only showed the faces of the girls? Should prosecutors charge the kid under cyberbullying laws? They don’t even seem to be sure and legal scholars are split on the issue. Is it a crime or isn’t it?

Most parents would say the kid should be thrown in jail. The problem is that state and federal lawmakers have thus far turned a blind eye to the potential dangers of AI technology. Prosecutors will have to throw some charges against a wall and see if they can make them stick in front of a court. That’s not the prosecutors’ fault—it’s the fault of lawmakers. They’re too worried about their stock portfolios which are heavily invested in AI companies right now.

If they won’t protect children from the potential abuse that AI can cause, they’re certainly not going to worry about the accountant in the HR department who just lost her entire career because she was replaced by a robot. No one in charge is talking about the dangers of AI. That should concern everyone.