Schools are falling short in meeting the rising threat of artificial intelligence-enabled sexual harassment, concludes a new report from the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for online civil liberties.
Forty percent of students and 29 percent of teachers say they know of a “deepfake” depicting individuals associated with their school being shared during the 2023-24 school year, according to the nationally representative survey of high school students, middle and high school teachers, and parents. (A deepfake is a digitally-manipulated video, photo, or audio recording created using someone’s voice and/or likeness without their permission.)
The primary perpetrators—and victims—are students, the report found.
While the act of sharing non-consensual intimate imagery is a long-standing problem in schools, the rise of generative artificial intelligence has made it easier to create and share fake intimate images, videos, or audio that seem real. In recent months, there have been several reported instances of students using AI tools to generate fake, pornographic images of their classmates and fake videos of their teachers or principals.
“The surface area for who can become a victim and who can become a perpetrator is significantly increased when anybody has access to these tools,” said Kristin Woelfel, a policy counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology and one of the authors of the report. “There’s really no limit as to who could be impacted by this.”
For those who are victims of real or deepfake non-consensual intimate images, the experience is “scary” and “traumatic,” said Anjali Verma, the National Student Council president and a senior at a charter school in West Chester, Pa. “I’ve seen it happen with friends and people in my life.”
Students, teachers, and parents report a lack of support and awareness about deepfake non-consensual intimate imagery. For instance, few students say their school has explained what deepfakes are (19 percent), how they affect those depicted (13 percent), and who to tell at the school if they see or hear about them (15 percent), the report found.
And 60 percent of teachers and 67 percent of parents surveyed say they have not heard of their school or school district sharing policies and procedures with teachers about how to address authentic or deepfake non-consensual intimate imagery.
Still, a third of students said their school does a good job of catching students who share deepfake non-consensual intimate imagery, while 1 in 10 students who have heard of such incidents at their school said the student who shared it was never caught, according to the report.
Questions to ask to help prevent future ‘deepfake’ incidents
In the current environment, a lot of schools focus on “severe discipline” for the perpetrators, Woelfel said. Those methods might include suspension or expulsion, as well as getting law enforcement involved, she said.
The problem, Woelfel said, is that there is almost no focus on preventing the conduct in the first place and on supporting the victim after the incident.
Woelfel and Anjali acknowledged that schools need a lot of guidance from policymakers in order to have better response and prevention strategies, but they had some suggestions for where schools can start.
For prevention, Woelfel said schools need to better educate students and staff about deepfakes, asking questions such as:
- What is a deepfake?
- What is the harm of creating one?
- What are the consequences of making and sharing them?
- Who can they go to when they see or hear about these incidents?
Education and awareness shouldn’t just start at the high school level, Anjali emphasized. It should be a conversation that begins in elementary school, in age-appropriate ways.
“We have to start students very young, making sure that they’re aware of the [digital] world and the amount of power that comes with having this technology access,” Anjali said.
Support for victims could include providing counseling and resources for how to get deepfakes taken down if they were posted online, Woelfel said.
It’s also important to “take a step back and reevaluate” the school climate to ensure that students feel “empowered” to tell an adult when something bad has happened, Anajli said.
“We have to make sure there’s an environment where students are able to come to administration about these things without the fear of being judged,” she added.
The Center for Democracy & Technology survey included 1,316 9th- to 12th-grade students, 1,006 6th- to 12th-grade teachers, and 1,028 parents of 6th- to 12th-grade students. It was conducted this summer.
