Two teenage boys in Pennsylvania were sentenced to probation after admitting they used artificial intelligence to create fake nude images of classmates at an exclusive private school, according to court proceedings described by the Associated Press.

The case, heard in Lancaster County in juvenile court that is normally closed, was opened by the judge, creating an unusual opportunity for students and families to appear and speak. Dozens of students and parents from Lancaster Country Day School attended the hearing as victims described the experience of having to identify their own faces in pornographic images to detectives.

AP reported that the boys were 14 at the time, and that they admitted this month that they made about 350 images showing at least 59 girls under 18, along with other victims who have not been identified. Authorities said the boys took images of the girls from school photos, yearbooks, Instagram, TikTok and FaceTime chats in 2023 and 2024, then morphed the images using adults depicting nudity or sexual activity.

At the hearing, victims described lasting fallout, including anxiety attacks, a loss of trust, problems focusing on schoolwork and fear that the images might resurface in unexpected ways. AP also reported that the defendants stood with their lawyers and parents while victims addressed the court, and that the boys were called pedophiles and described with statements such as “sick and twisted” and perverted.

One victim told Judge Leonard Brown, in a quote AP included, “I will never understand why they did this,” adding that it “destroyed my innocence.” Another teen told the judge “how excruciating it is to bring these feelings up again and again,” AP reported, while another student described needing trauma therapy to walk around her neighborhood and said friends transferred schools.

A defense attorney, Heidi Freese, told the court the matter had become a long process for everyone involved and said there were “very interesting, underlying legal issues surrounding the charges in this case and those will be decided on a different day in a different case,” AP reported. AP said the defendants declined multiple opportunities to comment to the judge, who also said he hadn’t heard either boy take responsibility or apologize.

According to AP, the second defendant’s lawyers emailed a statement late Wednesday saying he was “extremely remorseful for his part in the AI-generated images and very sorry for any hurt he caused.” Defense attorneys Adam Szilagyi and Christopher Sarno wrote that one defendant did not intend the images to be public, and they argued that the images “contained nudity but did not contain any representations of sexual conduct or activity.” Szilagyi later said in a follow-up text that the defendant was accountable as part of a conspiracy and that both boys “gathered and exchanged the unaltered/original images that were put into the generator,” AP reported.

Judge Brown ordered each boy to perform 60 hours of community service, have no contact with the victims and pay an unspecified amount of restitution. AP reported that Brown said if the boys did not have additional legal problems, the case could be expunged after two years. As he imposed the sentence, AP said Brown told the boys that if they were adults they probably would be headed for state prison and urged them to “take this opportunity to really examine” themselves.

The AP report placed the Pennsylvania case in a broader context of deepfakes becoming more accessible through AI. In Tennessee, AP said three teenagers sued Elon Musk’s xAI, alleging its Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images, seeking class-action status. AP also noted that lawmakers in the U.S. have passed or expanded laws aimed at barring deepfakes, including the Take it Down Act signed by President Donald Trump, which AP said makes it illegal to publish intimate images including deepfakes without consent and requires websites and social media sites to remove such material within 48 hours of notification by a victim.

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