AI 'nudify' deepfakes of classmates spread in schools; first US criminal charges

Across 2024 a wave of school incidents emerged in which students, typically boys, used AI 'nudify' tools to fabricate non-consensual nude images of female classmates from ordinary social-media photos. In a case reported in March 2024, two Miami middle-school boys aged 13 and 14 were arrested and charged with felonies for creating and sharing such images of classmates aged 12-13 — reported as the first known US criminal case involving harm from AI-generated sexual imagery; separately, the Beverly Hills Unified School District expelled five middle-school students over similar conduct. Researchers later catalogued comparable incidents across dozens of schools in multiple countries affecting hundreds of students. These cases drove state-law changes and, federally, the TAKE IT DOWN Act (signed May 19 2025), which criminalises non-consensual intimate imagery including AI 'digital forgeries' and mandates 48-hour platform takedowns. Summarised at policy level only; no tools or methods are described.