They Dedicated Their Lives to Teaching. Then the Deepfakes Started
“When I finally saw the image, that’s when it felt like a punch to the gut,” DeSantiago tells WIRED. Parts of it resembled a mirror selfie that he remembered taking at a job in college. But instead of his work uniform, he was wearing lingerie. And instead of standing normally, as he had been in the original photo, he was posing suggestively.
The texts kicked off a monthslong saga that crossed two schools and involved students and administrators. And DeSantiago is far from the only educator who’s been victimized this way.
WIRED spoke with three other teachers who allege that their students made sexualized photos and videos of them, likely using AI. They say the incidents have been profoundly distressing and disappointing—and in some cases, it’s led them to reassess how they view their work and their relationships with their students.
https://www.wired.com/story/teachers-deepfake-ai-students-content/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works
7 replies
This is the core of it. This technology has evolved so fast and become so prolific that kids have no idea of the far reaching consequences of their actions.
we're living in the "move fast, break things" epoch of human history
The things we are breaking is us.
People could always fake images though? Maybe it's a bit easier now, but it doesn't make the images any more real or meaningful, like, rule 34 has always existed and nobody thought it said anything bad about the characters depicted, but the people who drew them if at all
As with most digital technology: yes, people could do roughly the same thing before. The primary difference is the ease with which it can be done, and that the result can be shared infinitely and instantly.
It is totally possible school kids drew their teachers in lingerie in the 1800s, but it would require a modicum of talent and it would be really difficult to distribute without a printing press.
It would have been punished then. But the audience would have been small.
Now, any kid with unfettered internet access can do it, and distribute the result to their entire community, or make it available to the entire world with some flavour of filesharing.
People can fake images freely, realistically, and quickly now, but distrbuting sexual images of real people against their wishes (faked or not) has been considered criminal (at least in Canada) for some time.
Rule 34 is another issue entirely, since that has more to do with copyright and intellectual property. IP owners generally don't waste their time on that kind of thing unless someone's making significant money from it.
Students creating fake porn images of their teachers via Photoshop would be similarly problematic.
Nobody thought to say anything or you refused to listen to the people raising concerns?