Baltimore County Police arrested Pikesville High School’s former athletic director Thursday morning and charged him with allegedly using artificial intelligence to impersonate Principal Eric Eiswert, leading the public to believe Eiswert made racist and antisemitic comments behind closed doors.

Dazhon Darien was charged with disrupting school activities, after investigators determined they’d faked his voice and circulated the audio on social media in January, according to the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office.** **Darien’s nickname, DJ, was among the names mentioned in the audio clips he allegedly faked.

Eiswert’s voice, which police and AI experts believe was simulated, made disparaging comments toward Black students and the surrounding Jewish community, was widely circulated on social media.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 months ago

    Ravenell told police that she had forwarded the email to a student’s cell phone, “who she knew would rapidly spread the message around various social media outlets and throughout the school,” and also sent it to the media and the NAACP, police said.

    Time for a civil suit. This one needs greater penalties than loss of employment. Stick within the system so it can be investigated rather than throwing it on social media and ruining innocent lives. What a complete piece of shit. Oh, and she should have to compensate the school district for all the time and taxpayer funds wasted.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I don’t know, but I’m guessing long after it will be possible to make fake AI recordings that are essentially indistinguishable from the real thing.

    • Grimy@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      There isn’t much way to regulate it without banning the programs from the internet and our computers and only letting us use the tools through “certified” distributors with subscription models.

      And even then, the bad actors will still have access to it through the seedy parts of the internet.

      Regulation doesn’t really protect anyone when it comes to software, it just puts up walls and guarantees monopolies.

      I don’t think it’s okay to abuse of it and I’m glad the person will most likely face jail time but I shouldn’t be penalized and barred from using some very useful programs because he decided to be an ass about it.

      • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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        8 months ago

        There isn’t much way to regulate it without banning the programs from the internet and our computers and only letting us use the tools through “certified” distributors with subscription models.

        Enhanced sentencing for using it to commit a crime. Deterrent is likely the only partial solution.

        • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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          8 months ago

          I suspect the people doing these things don’t sit down ahead of time and think “Hm, if I get caught I could go to jail for four years instead of two… I’d accept two, but four is too much.” Generally speaking the exact severity of the punishment isn’t really all that relevant. It’s how likely the person is to be caught at all that gives criminals pause.

          I think the best thing to do would be to highly publicize situations like this where attempts to frame people fail. Make people who were thinking of doing something like this aware that they can be caught, and they’ll hopefully rethink themselves. And ideally it’ll be useful for the victims too, to be able to point to these cases when they tell people they didn’t really say those horrible things.

  • FiveMacs
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    8 months ago

    Ravenell told police that she had forwarded the email to a student’s cell phone

    Lol wut