Union County moms say daughters are victims of AI child porn created by classmates

UNION COUNTY, N.C. (WBTV) - As artificial intelligence continues to advance, it also continues to get used in increasingly disturbing ways.

One issue that is becoming more widespread is the use of artificial intelligence to harm children, specifically through the creation of child pornography.

What’s even more terrifying is how a harmless photo of anyone, including children, can be used to create vile material.

WBTV is diving into the ugly depths of artificial intelligence after two Union County women said their daughters were victims of AI child porn.

Here’s a look at their story, the overall problem, and what the FBI has to say.

The problem: Predators using AI to generate child sexual abuse material

Your child could be the victim of a growing cesspool of digital danger, and not even know it until it’s too late.

Reid Davis, the special agent in charge at the FBI Charlotte office, says AI-generated child pornography is just as bad as the real deal.

He said that predators have everything they need in the palm of their hands.

“There are mechanisms for perpetrators to actually take the photograph of a clothed individual and de-clothe them to what they potentially could look like in the nude, and use those in the same ways either for their own gratification for exchanging in dark web networks, or for sextortion,” Davis said.

An innocent picture of a wholesome event like prom or a state championship can easily get turned into child pornography with the swipe of a finger, or the click of a mouse.

Davis says the tools are available across all platforms, and can even be found for free in the app store on your phone.

“Super intelligence is everywhere, and it’s only going to gain more of a foothold in everything that we’re doing with the internet,” Agent Davis said. “But it’s readily accessible to anybody free of charge from multiple different apps to multiple different websites.”

What’s frightening: Someone in Charlotte has already been charged and sentenced to prison for AI child porn. FBI agents in Charlotte investigated the case.

“It was actually an adult child psychiatrist. He was taking photographs from his childhood of colleagues from his early years of education, and taking those very innocent photographs of first day at school, first day at the bus stop ... and utilizing superintelligence to de-clothe those children at that period in their life to what they would look like, or could look like, in the nude, and then using those photographs nefariously,” Davis said.

Meanwhile, FBI agents are trying to use AI for good, but the challenge comes from trying to keep up when a new app or tool seemingly pops up every day.

“We’re trying to leverage the same technologies to again make us more efficient in identifying victims, communicating with victims, and identifying perpetrators to leverage charges against them,” Davis said. “Lots of different platforms have lots of different specialties, but just about all of them could be leveraged for something like this.”

The victims: Union County girls targeted by AI child porn

Two Union County mothers are going on the record with WBTV about sexually graphic photos of their daughters being passed around school. The photos aren’t entirely real; they were created using artificial intelligence.

WBTV is not identifying the mothers since their children are both underage.

The mothers told WBTV that their daughters were in eighth grade at Marvin Ridge Middle School when the photos were created and shared. The moms say their children have since faced mental and emotional trauma.

The parents are now fighting to make sure all parents know this could happen to their child.

“We don’t want another parent or child to be in the same shoes we’re in. If we stay quiet, what are we doing?”

For the two Union County moms, the end of their daughters’ eighth-grade year was supposed to be one to remember. It was, but for all the wrong reasons.

“I go in her room and she’s crying,” one of the mothers said in an interview. “She said, ‘There is a naked picture of me and my friends passed around school.’ Me not even thinking, I said, ‘What do you mean? What do you mean a naked picture? Where did it come from? Why would you do that?’”

“I had to ask her, which still really haunts me when this question is asked to her, if she was nude in a picture,” the other mother said. “I feel tremendous guilt having to ask that question to her, because she was horrified. She was like, ‘No, I would never do that.’”

The children’s bodies in the photo are artificial intelligence, but the girls’ faces in the photo are all too real.

“They nudified it. Basically, they took a very happy, innocent picture of our girls in a very realistic sense, put a nude, fully nude image onto our daughters’ bodies to be seamless with their very real and very minor faces,” the moms say.

Their daughters were 13 and 14 years old at the time of the incident.

The moms say two of the girls’ classmates created the photo using an app or website, and then passed it around Marvin Ridge Middle School. The school resource officer told the moms that one of the boys deleted the photo, but the mothers say that’s not enough.

“This is not a notepad that he created it on. This is the internet, the vast wide web that the image was out in,” they say. “Simply deleting it off his phone after it had been distributed certainly does not give us any peace of mind.”

Even though the nudity wasn’t real, the mothers say that the damage to their daughters was very real, and still affects them.

“They’re still going to school, seeing the boys. The boys can sit as close as they want to the girls, as long as they don’t contact them. They can’t touch them,” one of the moms said. “It’s very uncomfortable for the girls, very uncomfortable. It also sets precedence that it’s OK. It’s not a big deal to the rest of the students that saw the picture, and everybody that knows about it.”

“These girls have been uninvited to things, because parents have seen the invite list, seen our girls’ names on them, and uninvited them. What that does to a 13- and 14-year-old girl whose whole world right now is their friends? I mean, it’s demoralizing,” the other mother said.

According to the Union County Sheriff’s Office, the two boys have been charged with second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor. The sheriff’s office said the charges were filed by the school resource officer, and that there have been “no additional reports or incidents related to this matter.”

The mothers say they’re the ones who are being made to feel like they’ve done something wrong.

“There have been families that have contacted both of us separately, different families, who have been advocating for the boys’ families to essentially say, in sum, boys will be boys,” the mothers told WBTV.

With AI becoming more and more prevalent, the moms are warning other parents.

“It’s so easy to do,” one of the moms said.

“It’s going to be wildfire. It already is starting. If schools, if the state, if our country doesn’t get ahead of trying to create accountability ... it’s just another mom’s going to be sitting right here,” the other mother said.

The Union County District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting this case in juvenile court, according to the mothers.

In the Union County Public Schools student code of conduct published online, discipline for possession of pornographic, profane, and/or violent material could lead to a three-to five-day suspension for middle or high school students.

WBTV reached out to Union County Public Schools about this situation.

The school district said it can’t release information about student matters, but said that violations of the student code of conduct are “immediately addressed by school-level staff.”

The district also said that if an “incident may violate Title IX regulations, the possible complainants” can file a formal Title IX complaint “for the district to investigate.” Any such investigation would require the district to put a pause on disciplinary action “pending the completion of the Title IX investigation,” per federal regulation, the district said.

It was not immediately known whether a Title IX complaint was filed, in this case.

“While Policy 4-23 addresses student criminal behavior, any district action based on that policy is limited to circumstances where a student has been convicted or charged with a violent crime as outlined in the statute,” the district’s statement read.

The warning: FBI says anyone can be a victim of AI child porn

In the age of social media, a picture capturing a happy and innocent moment can now be turned into pornography in a matter of seconds. It can all be done through free apps that anyone can access.

“It’s a genie that’s out of the bottle,” the Union County mothers say.

The mothers say the photo of their daughters, which was distorted into pornography, was a happy moment from the end of the softball season.

“The [girls] have lost friends and have been victimized all over again, as if they were the problem,” said one of the moms.

Agents with the FBI in North Carolina are now battling this new type of child pornography.

“It’s ruining very good memories for individuals of their childhood, and distorting those memories and darkening them,” said Special Agent in Charge Reid Davis.

The FBI does not investigate cases with juvenile suspects. It’s up to state and local authorities, meaning police, sheriffs’ offices, and local district attorneys to charge and prosecute any teenage offenders.

The FBI is trying to get the warning out to parents to prevent other families from becoming victims of AI child porn.

“There’s lots of different applications for parents to put locks and filters on what their kids can see and do and use on the internet,” Davis said. “I would ask parents to explore those options with minors.”

Davis said the locks and privacy settings can apply to anyone, no matter your age.

“Make sure that whatever network group you have in your privacy settings is who you want to view those types of activities and that they’re trusted,” Davis said. “Having parameters on who is able to see your pictures is extremely important to you and your child’s health.”

The warning is now also coming from the families of the victims fighting for justice in Union County.

“Any parent, period, should know that this is this easy with AI,” one of the Union County mothers said. “This is destructive to the person who creates it, in a sense, that they are going to and should be held accountable for what they do. It’s a crime, and then the victims are forever changed.”

The mothers say they are due back in court for a hearing in late November regarding their case.