He said the ease of use of AI-generating programs ensured almost anyone could use them to create realistic photos of another person.

“You don’t need to have a Ph.D. to set these things up,” he said. “Kids always tend to be on the leading edge of tech innovation. It doesn’t surprise me that you have young people with the sophistication to do this kind of stuff.”

An expert in technological abuse, Newport Beach-based psychotherapist Kristen Zaleski says she has yet to see a law enforcement officer or school staff member who truly understands the harms of AI and sexual violence.

“As an advocate, I feel we need to do a lot more to educate politicians and law enforcement on the extent of this problem and the psychological harm it causes,” said Zaleski, chief clinical officer at the Mental Health Collective. “I have yet to reach out to law enforcement to take a report who has taken it seriously or who has knowledge of it. I find a lot of my advocacy with law enforcement and politicians is educating them on what this is rather than them understanding how to help survivors.”

Which laws apply?

Despite their potential for harm, whether the images the students generated of their classmates would actually be considered illegal remains largely unsettled.

Only two years ago did Congress update the Violence Against Women Act to include criminalizing revenge porn, which covers the nonconsensual release of intimate visual depictions of a person. But legal experts said it’s not clear if the updated law would apply to fictional depictions of a person, versus real photos showing a crime being committed against them. That likely would apply to defining child pornography, too.

“In most states, the definition would not include a synthesized, digital, intimate photo of someone — they’re just excluded,” said Rebecca Delfino, associate dean for Clinical Programs and Experiential Learning at Loyola Law School, and an expert on the “intersection of the law and current events and emergencies.”

She explained, “You have to have one individual, one clear individual — you see their face, you see their body. You know that is a person. You have a victim who is being abused, you took real images of them doing something. Those are genuine photos.”

Multiple experts cited the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court case, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, which struck down a provision of the Child Pornography Prevention Act that outlawed all depictions of child pornography, including computer-generated ones. The court ruled the law was overly broad and violated First Amendment protections for speech; the justices blocked the U.S. government from banning images where no crime was committed to create them.

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