Teens get probation after using AI to create fake nudes of classmates
[March 26, 2026]
By MARK SCOLFORO
LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — Two teenage boys who used artificial intelligence
to create fake nude photos of their classmates at an exclusive private
school in Pennsylvania received probation Wednesday after dozens of
victims described the images' traumatizing effect on them.
The boys were 14 at the time. They admitted this month that they made
about 350 images, showing at least 59 girls under 18, along with other
victims who so far have not been identified.
Authorities and the girls themselves said the boys took images of the
girls from school photos, yearbooks, Instagram, TikTok and FaceTime
chats in 2023 and 2024, and morphed them with images of adults depicting
nudity or sexual activity.
More than 100 students and parents from Lancaster Country Day School
were in court to hear victims describe the shock of having to identify
their own faces in pornographic photos to detectives. Juvenile
proceedings in Pennsylvania are normally closed, but this was opened by
the judge, providing an unusual opportunity for the community to be seen
and heard.
The girls described the fallout — anxiety attacks, a loss of trust,
problems focusing on schoolwork and a fear that the images may someday
surface in unexpected ways.
The two defendants 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 teen 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 involved.
Still another said all of her friends transferred schools, and that she
“needed trauma therapy to even walk around my neighborhood.”
Judge said he hadn't heard boys apologize
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.”
The other defendant’s lawyers emailed a statement late Wednesday that
said he was “extremely remorseful for his part in the AI-generated
images and very sorry for any hurt he caused.”
Defense attorneys Adam Szilagyi and Christopher Sarno wrote that the
images, which the lawyers said their client did not intend to be public,
“contained nudity but did not contain any representations of sexual
conduct or activity.”
They said their client did not use “any AI generator himself nor did he
disseminate any of the images.” Szilagyi said in a follow-up text that
his client was accountable as part of the conspiracy and that both of
the boys “gathered and exchanged the unaltered/original images that were
put into the generator.”
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Lancaster Country Day School in Lancaster, Pa., Wednesday, March 25,
2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
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.
Rise of AI has led to deepfakes
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. ___
Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey,
and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.
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