Understanding the Enemy Inside Your House
I could report on two custody cases decided on Friday where parents, grandparents and stepparents decided to duke it out over how best to manage children. If you recall the movie “Jaws” these cases are just another fight on the beach while the real sharks are just offshore, looking for prey.
Today’s front page of the Wall Street Journal: “Deepfake Nudes Transform Bullying.”
The summary: anyone with a phone can now digitally undress your child and post that content for the world to see. Laws are behind our artificially intelligent times and schools don’t know how to help or if they are exposing themselves to litigation if they try. Federal law intended to protect minors prevents police from trying to help parents take down these deep-fake nude images.
Unlike internet gaming and fraud scams the “perps” portraying your daughter or son in the nude are not from Asia or Eastern Europe. They’re in middle school too and they may ride on the same bus as your kid. They don’t really grasp the harm they are doing. In fact, you may be harboring both a victim and a perpetrator inside your own home. One is creating a fake nude of a classmate while another is finding herself undressed for the world to see. A recent survey of students at George Mason University in Virginia revealed that half the polled students had created a deep fake nude. A third said they had been subjected to this indignity.
Last month the federal “Take it Down Act” went into effect. It makes it a crime to publish these kinds of images without consent. 47 U.S.C. 609. Unfortunately, most middle school students don’t read the U.S. Crimes Code, let alone the Communications Act of 1934. The good news is that parents of a child under 18 can demand that internet providers “Take it Down” but it should be self-evident that the child’s entire community will probably see the pic before a parent can intervene. Apple and Google profess to be disabling “nudification” software but the Journal notes that ambitious kids can find sites to provide the service. This is where offshore software companies can thrive. If anything the Journal article shows “a little too much” where and how these services can be found. The services can also upload and enhance voice recordings such than the household voice answering machine can now be used to convey pornographic language.
Kids are unrestrained. They have posted fake nudes and videos of faculty and school staff. One female teacher changed schools, then districts and is now considering a name change to purge an AI video history she never consented to. Kids have demanded payments to avoid publication of their work. Many would struggle to spell the word “extortion.”
Lots of this conduct is criminal and almost all of it is tortious. But does the 46 year old schoolteacher want to see her 9th grade biology student incarcerated? How much will she collect if she sues the child for invasion of privacy? A deepfake nude video might so distress your child that she contemplates suicide. But, if you walk her back from that tragic path, what do you tell the district attorney when she says she needs your kid to testify and help put her classmate “behind bars.”
These are ugly, ugly topics. They are one stall over from the explosion in teenage gambling on the internet. They have the capacity to destroy children who can’t fully grasp the harm they are suffering or inflicting. Yet, we are reading cases where parents fight over whether grandpa should get an overnight or whether a child should enroll in football or soccer.