Sadly, I think we could all see this coming. An explicit deepfake scandal has shut down Pennsylvania school due to how it was handled.

As reported in Ars Technica (Explicit deepfake scandal shuts down Pennsylvania school, written by Ashley Belanger and available here), an AI-generated nude photo scandal has shut down a Pennsylvania private school. On Monday, classes were canceled after parents forced leaders to either resign or face a lawsuit potentially seeking criminal penalties and accusing the school of skipping mandatory reporting of the harmful images.

The outcry erupted after a single student reportedly created sexually explicit AI images of nearly 50 female classmates at Lancaster Country Day School.

Head of School Matt Micciche reportedly first learned of the problem in November 2023, when a student anonymously reported the explicit deepfakes through a school portal run by the state attorney’s general office called “Safe2Say Something.” But Micciche allegedly did nothing, allowing more students to be targeted for months until police were tipped off in mid-2024.

Cops arrested the student accused of creating the harmful content in August. The student’s phone was seized as cops investigated the origins of the AI-generated images. But that arrest was not enough justice for parents who were shocked by the school’s failure to uphold mandatory reporting responsibilities following any suspicion of child abuse. They filed a court summons threatening to sue last week unless the school leaders responsible for the mishandled response resigned within 48 hours.

This tactic successfully pushed Micciche and the school board’s president, Angela Ang-Alhadeff, to “part ways” with the school, both resigning effective late Friday, Lancaster Online reported.

However, parents do not seem ready to drop the suit, as the school leaders seemingly dragged their feet and resigned two days after their deadline. The parents’ lawyer, Matthew Faranda-Diedrich, told Lancaster Online Monday that “the lawsuit would still be pursued despite executive changes.”

In a statement announcing that classes were canceled Monday, Lancaster Country Day School – which, according to Wikipedia, serves about 600 students in pre-kindergarten through high school – offered support during this “difficult time” for the community. Classes were planned to resume on Tuesday, though the matter may not be over as more than half the school walked out las week and some faculty members have called for resignations and additional changes from remaining leadership.

The Ars Technica article goes on to discuss proposed efforts from lawmakers to address this emerging challenge. But these proposed US laws have mostly quickly stalled, as kids as young as 12 or 13 continue to risk being victimized, and penalties for distributing AI-generated nudes of children appear rare under current laws.

In May, the feds arrested a software engineer accused of using AI-generated child sex abuse materials (CSAM) to groom a teen on Instagram. That case could put to the test the US Department of Justice’s declaration that “CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM.” (Some experts have suggested that cyberbullying laws, not CSAM laws, may apply in these sorts of cases.)

Unfortunately, this explicit deepfake scandal is not the first, and certainly won’t be the last (far from it). While I’m not sure anything we do will stop them, we do need strong deterrents (in the form of clear laws and severe criminal penalties) to slow them down. It can’t happen soon enough.

So, what do you think? What do you think it will take to address the growing problem of explicit deepfake images and videos? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the authors and speakers themselves, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.