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Students made a racist deepfake of a principal. It left parents in fear.

The firestorm touched on several hot-button issues in schools, including racism, student privacy, abuse of artificial intelligence and threats of gun violence

By
March 14, 2023 at 9:20 p.m. EDT
Three high school students in Putnam County, N.Y., made a deepfake of the George Fischer Middle School principal going on a racist rant against Black students. (Google Maps)
5 min

The first letter from Carmel Central School District officials arrived on Feb. 13, alerting parents that three high-schoolers had “used artificial intelligence to impersonate the staff” and made them appear to make “inappropriate comments” in videos.

There was no threat to school safety, the letter added.

Abigail Santana didn’t think much about that last part. After reading the letter from her child’s school district in Putnam County, N.Y., she assumed it had handled the situation. But then her 10-year-old told her they’d seen the videos on TikTok — and apart from the deepfake of her middle school principal making a profanity-laced racist rant, other videos created by the high-schoolers included “threats to shoot up Black and Latino students,” Santana said.