AI incident ·
AI incident: sexual content (Nov 2023)
In brief
An AI system built by Synthetic video generation technology developers, Synthetic media generation technology developers and 2 others and deployed by Two unnamed Lancaster Country Day School students, Synthetic media creators and 4 others allegedly harmed Women and girls, Victims of deepfake child abuse and 10 others.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 8 reports
What happened
From November 2023 through May 2024, two Lancaster Country Day School students in Pennsylvania allegedly used AI tools to create and exchange hundreds of sexualized deepfake images depicting female classmates and other girls. Authorities later identified 60 victims, 59 of them minors. The students were adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court, and families later sued the school and unnamed AI companies over the incident.
Editor's notes
Timeline notes: (1) The incident ID date of 11/01/2023 is an approximation. In November 2023, the deepfake activity was discovered and reported to the school; (2) May 2024, additional information surfaced and the alleged activity ended; (3) 12/05/2024: Two juveniles were charged; (4) 03/25/2026: They received probation; and (5) 06/15/2026: Victims and parents filed a federal lawsuit. (6) The incident ID was created 08/06/2026.
Laws that address this harm
No recorded instrument yet addresses this use case where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (8)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Two unnamed Lancaster Country Day School students Synthetic media creators Students Minors Deepfake creators AI-generated CSAM creators
- Alleged developer
- Synthetic video generation technology developers Synthetic media generation technology developers Synthetic image generation technology developers Deepfake technology developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Women and girls Victims of deepfake child abuse Victims of deepfake abuse Victims of CSAM Students Privacy Minors Lancaster Country Day School students Lancaster Country Day School Girls Families of Lancaster Country Day School students Epistemic integrity
AI systems implicated
Synthetic video generation technologySynthetic media generation technologySynthetic image generation technologyDeepfake technology
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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Related incidents
Linked by editors or by text similarity in the source dataset.
Source record: incident #1623 on the AI Incident Database · all 8 reports