We recently learned that Joe Biden is “very interested” in Artificial Intelligence and was issuing a lengthy series of executive orders intended to promote the advancement of the technology while establishing “guardrails” to prevent harm. I know what many of you are probably thinking. Kamala Harris is the AI czar. What could possibly go wrong? The answer, as it turns out, is “a lot.”

Take for example all of the AI image and video-generating software that is freely available out there. Over the past few years, we’ve seen countless examples of “deep fakes” involving celebrities and public figures, including some of Donald Trump. They are incredibly realistic. Now consider how many children also have access to all of these tools, many with little or no parental supervision. Next, ask yourself what teenage boys in high school are probably most interested in. The answer, of course, is high school girls in the majority of cases. Can you guess where this story goes next? At one New Jersey high school, teen boys were combining photos of their female classmates with readily available pornography and passing around pornographic images of the girls that looked completely realistic. Now the police are involved and the parents (mostly of the girls) are up in arms. (NY Post)

AI-generated pornographic images of female students at a New Jersey high school were circulated by male classmates, sparking parent uproar and a police investigation, according a report.

Students at Westfield High School — located in Westfield, a town about 25 miles west of Manhattan where the average household income is $259,377, according to Forbes — told the Wall Street Journal that one or more classmates used an online AI-backed tool to create the racy images and then shared them with peers.

A mother whose daughter is a student at Westfield High School, recounting what her child told her to the Journal, said sophomore boys at the school were acting “weird” on Monday, Oct. 16.

I’ll confess that I felt not only outraged by this story but fairly stupid for not having seen this coming. I play with some of that same software for writing projects, mostly related to sci-fi material, and it’s incredibly powerful. After the fact, it should have been obvious that teen boys would be doing this. They’re probably doing it all over the place and these were just the first kids to get caught because they couldn’t keep their mouths shut.

This is not “innocent fun” or harmless. Children aren’t supposed to be accessing pornography in the first place, but that horse has long since left the barn. But this takes things to another, far more frightening level. Can you imagine what this sort of experience will do to young girls? The mother of one 14-year-old girl who wound up being an unwilling porn star said that she was “terrified” of what might happen in the future.

It’s hard enough being a teenager in America these days under the best of circumstances. But now these young girls have to live with the knowledge that there are totally realistic nude pictures of them floating around out there and the internet never forgets. As the mother explained, what if those pictures show up when her daughter is applying for college or for a job? What if some pervert gets hold of them and can figure out where she lives based on the school she attends? This sort of thing could easily lead to suicidal ideation for a vulnerable teen.

The police are investigating this specific case in New Jersey, but it’s unclear what they can do about it. The boys were using publicly available photos of the girls from social media and the software was combining them with legal images of young (but adult) porn actresses. Nobody was secretly filming the teen girls or stealing their data. I’m not sure what they can even charge the boys with beyond underage possession of some adult material.

So are we expected to just throw up our hands and declare that this is one more facet of AI that we’re just going to have to “get used to?” That’s simply not a good enough answer. But we’re in uncharted waters here I fear, both legally and technologically. This is the brave new world of Artificial Intelligence, I suppose. But where were the “guardrails” to prevent these young girls’ lives from being derailed? It would appear that they don’t exist.