AUSTIN, Texas (KEYE) — A new warning for families: Children are using artificial intelligence to create and spread content about other students. This problem is emerging across the country.
A deepfake is an image, video or audio recording that has been edited to replace one person with another and appear authentic. It’s like putting one person’s face on another person’s body.
This content often causes anxiety among high school students and victims who have had content created about them.
A new bill offers possible solutions to stop the spread of this sexually exploitative content.
“It’s incredibly difficult to be a teenager right now,” said Senator Ted Cruz (R). “As a parent of a teenager, you often feel powerless and helpless to help your children because they face so many challenges.”
Children today face many challenges that their parents did not cope with during their school years.
“We are seeing a pattern of explicit images being shared without consent,” Senator Cruz said.
According to Senator Cruz, 90% of people who fall victim to these deepfakes on the Internet are women or young girls.
“We are seeing more and more children becoming victims of a ninth-grader who decides to bully another ninth-grader and shows explicit images of it to all the other children in the class,” said Senator Cruz.
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He is trying to change this with his “Take It Down Act”. The law is intended to do two things: it will make it a criminal offense to publish explicit images online without the victim’s consent, and it will give major technology companies 48 hours to remove explicit content once they receive a complaint from a victim.
“There is a little bit of fear, fear of the unknown,” said Dr. Michael Cardona, superintendent of San Marcos CISD.
According to Dr. Cardona, he is not aware of a single case of bullying caused by artificial intelligence in his district.
He told CBS Austin he attended hearings where the issue was discussed to take precautions.
“I think for us, it’s about presenting a policy to our school board members for approval,” he said. “Then we have to communicate to the community why we’re doing certain things.”
Dr. Cardona said he will give students an opportunity to comment on the issue at the beginning of the semester.
“How would you solve it? This is your campus, so tell us.”
In June, Senator Cruz met with two high school students who had experienced this type of bullying firsthand.
“Almost the exact same thing happened to both of them,” he said. “Boys in their class took pictures from social media and used deepfake technology to create naked, explicit images of them, which they then sent to all their classmates at school.”
One high school student came from New Jersey, the other from a town just outside Dallas.
“I will always be afraid of this happening again or coming up again, just because it can happen so easily to anyone, and it happened to me,” said Elliston Berry, who was just 14 when she discovered deepfake nude photos of herself circulating on social media.
The state of Texas has several laws in place to protect children from the dangers of AI, and more laws are expected to be passed in the next legislative session.
