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LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — In a shocking case involving artificial intelligence misuse, two teenage boys were sentenced to probation on Wednesday for creating fake nude images of their classmates at a prestigious private school in Pennsylvania. The victims provided emotional testimonies about the distressing impact of these images.
At 14 years old, the boys confessed earlier this month to producing around 350 altered images, depicting at least 59 underage girls. Authorities believe there may be additional victims who have yet to be identified.
Investigators revealed that the boys sourced images of the girls from school photos, yearbooks, and social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and FaceTime in 2023 and 2024. These were then digitally combined with adult content depicting nudity or sexual acts.
The courtroom was packed with over 100 students and parents from Lancaster Country Day School, who listened to victims recount their horror at identifying their faces in explicit images. Although juvenile court sessions in Pennsylvania are typically confidential, this one was opened by a judge, allowing the community to openly express their concerns.
The affected girls shared the emotional toll of the incident, describing anxiety attacks, eroded trust, difficulties concentrating on academics, and a persistent fear that the manipulated images could resurface at any time.
The two young men stood stone-faced throughout, flanked by their lawyers and parents, as they were called pedophiles, “sick and twisted” and perverted.
“I will never understand why they did this,” one victim told Judge Leonard Brown, saying it “destroyed my innocence.”
One young woman told Brown “how excruciating it is to bring these feelings up again and again.” Another choked back tears as she excoriated one of the defendants for expressing “fake empathy” as girls confided with him about their pain, before it became known that he had been part of creating and disseminating the images. Still another said all of her friends transferred schools, and that she “needed trauma therapy to even walk around my neighborhood.”
The defendants declined several opportunities to comment to the judge, who said he had not heard either boy take responsibility or apologize.
“This has been a regrettable, long, torturous process for everyone involved,” said Heidi Freese, defense attorney for one of the defendants. “There were very interesting, underlying legal issues surrounding the charges in this case and those will be decided on a different day in a different case.”
Brown ordered each to perform 60 hours of community service, have no contact with the victims and pay an unspecified amount of restitution. If they don’t have any additional legal problems, Brown said, the case can be expunged after two years.
As he imposed his sentence, Brown said that if they were adults, they probably would be headed for state prison. He said they should “take this opportunity to really examine” themselves.
The resolution of the Pennsylvania case comes days after three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk’s xAI, claiming the company’s Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images. The high school students are seeking class-action status to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of people who were similarly victimized as minors.
The scandal in Pennsylvania led to a student protest, criminal charges against the two teenagers and the departure of leaders at the school, which says it has about 600 students K-12, class sizes averaging just 12 kids, and “an endowment in excess of $25 million.”
Nadeem Bezar, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents at least 10 of the victims, said Tuesday he expects to file a claim “against the school and anybody else we think has culpability in these deepfakes being created and disseminated.”
He said he has not yet seen the photos but expects the legal process to determine “exactly when and where and how the school knew, how the boys created these images, what platforms they used to create these images and how they were disseminated.”
As AI has become accessible and powerful, lawmakers across the country have passed laws aimed at barring deepfakes.
President Donald Trump signed the Take it Down Act last year, making it illegal to publish intimate images including deepfakes without consent, and requiring websites and social media sites to remove such material within 48 hours of being notified by a victim.
Forty-six states now have laws addressing deepfakes, with legislation introduced in the remaining four — Alaska, Missouri, New Mexico and Ohio — according to the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. ____