Students used AI to make sexualized deepfakes of teachers

Four teachers in the United States and the United Kingdom, interviewed separately by WIRED, say their students used AI to make sexualized photos and videos of them and spread the material on TikTok and Snapchat. A fifth case, involving a teacher in her sixties, is relayed secondhand through one of the four rather than told to WIRED directly. The incidents triggered school investigations and, in most cases, some form of student discipline, and left several of the teachers reconsidering how they work with their students.

Luis DeSantiago, a substitute teacher in Los Banos, California, first heard about the material through text messages from a fellow barista at his other job: her cousin wanted to know if an AI photo circulating on social media was really him. When he saw it, it showed him in lingerie, posing suggestively, built from a mirror selfie he remembered taking at a college job. He traced one TikTok account sharing the image to a student he knew from a local middle school where he substituted, with a shift scheduled at that same school the next day, and suspected two more students were involved based on who followed and engaged with the account; a separate account impersonated him outright, using a slightly misspelled version of his name and his own photo as its picture. DeSantiago reported it to the assistant principal, who told him the school would "take care of it." One student admitted creating the image and received in-school suspension, but DeSantiago says the picture kept spreading, reached Snapchat, and drew crude sexual comments on his own TikTok account; he told administrators he did not want assignments at the middle school "until this matter is fully addressed." When he substituted at the local high school instead, he was AirDropped a copy of the same image during one class, quickly revoked but clearly circulating among the students there. The principal opened an "immediate investigation" and offered a meeting or the school counselor, but DeSantiago says he does not feel safe returning to the district this year. The district did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.

A middle school teacher in her mid-twenties, granted anonymity because her district had not authorized her to speak, says she has seen enough AI-generated harassment of teachers that she is "bracing for the next wave." A student first told her about a TikTok account impersonating her: the face had the telltale smoothness of AI-generated video, the mouth moved unnaturally, and the voice did not match her own, and while some clips showed her skydiving or doing backflips, others had her narrating sexual acts. Her principal said the school would "see what we can do"; students kept warning her about the account through the day, and some named the classmate they believed had made it, a student with a known history of behavioral problems. She had them report the account to TikTok, and it came down quickly, though she says some of the students who alerted her had genuinely believed the account was really her. She mentioned the episode at a staff meeting, where a colleague said he had separately seen an AI-generated video appearing to show himself getting arrested, which he suspected came from the same student. In the weeks that followed, that student began harassing her in person, cursing at her and calling her names; when she raised it at a later faculty meeting, the assistant principal said the same student had also been calling and texting them in the middle of the night and posting AI-generated photos of them on TikTok. The school removed the student from her class and limited his contact with her, but she says the harassment continued until he left the district, at which point TikTok removed the account.

In an account relayed secondhand by that same mid-twenties teacher, rather than told to WIRED directly, a colleague of hers in her sixties had public photos of herself manipulated last year to depict her performing sex acts, which students then shared in a Snapchat group chat.

In the UK, Alice (who asked to be identified only by her first name) works as a counselor at a college that trains 16-to-19-year-olds in trades such as construction, meeting individually with about 150 students a year as a mentor and sounding board. This past winter, administrators told her a student had reported two videos circulating among classmates: one appeared to be a real recording of her talking with a student, and the other a manipulated version of it showing her taking her clothes off and dancing in what looked like underwear or a bikini. Alice's job regularly involves discussing sensitive topics, like drugs or safe sex, that students feel too embarrassed to raise with parents, and she had had several such conversations with the student she suspected of making the video; he denied it when administrators questioned him and later dropped out of the school. The college did not respond to WIRED's request for comment. Alice says the episode made her question whether the student saw their conversations as license to overstep. The college let her step away from the class for a few weeks and began educating students about the danger of creating or distributing deepfakes; she says she still has a good rapport with her students, but is now more cautious and vigilant.

In Arizona, sixth-grade teacher Luke Red says students posted an AI-generated photo of him kissing another male teacher in the comments of his public TikTok account. He reported the accounts to TikTok not for the content itself but because the students were under the platform's minimum age of 13; TikTok did not remove them. The school investigated, quickly identified the student, who admitted creating and sharing the image, and gave him a three-day suspension, the most severe first-time penalty for sexual harassment under the district's handbook. Red says reflecting on the experience "has kind of sent me into a spiral," less over what happened to him personally than over the enthusiastic, permissive culture around AI use he sees among his students. He says he feels sorrier for the students than for himself, since he thinks many of them do not grasp how what they post can affect other people or how dangerous the internet can be.

Legal experts told WIRED the material sits at the edge of several protections. Disseminating fake nude images of nonconsenting adults can amount to cyberstalking and violate the federal Take It Down Act, which criminalizes publishing nonconsensual "intimate visual depictions of individuals, both authentic and computer-generated." Retired employment lawyer Donna Ballman says a student creating and sharing sexual images of a teacher is a "clear case" of workplace sexual harassment, and that federal antidiscrimination law obliges employers, including schools, to keep the workplace free of it, including by disciplining a student or moving them to a different classroom. But she notes there is "no blueprint" for how schools must respond, and administrators are not required to tell a victimized teacher what discipline, if any, was handed down; the standard, she says, is only that they "make [and] create a safe environment for the victim." In most of the accounts shared with WIRED, the teachers did not report the content to the platforms directly themselves. Snap spokesperson Monique Bellamy said the company's policies bar sharing AI-generated or manipulated content to humiliate or sexually harass others, that Snap has "established processes" for reporting it, and that it keeps developing tools for user safety; TikTok did not provide comment before publication.

Key facts

• Four teachers in the US and UK independently told WIRED their students used AI to make sexualized deepfake photos or videos of them and spread them on TikTok and Snapchat; a fifth case, a teacher in her sixties, was relayed secondhand rather than told to WIRED directly.
• Substitute teacher Luis DeSantiago's ordeal spanned two schools in Los Banos, California; one student admitted creating the AI image and got in-school suspension, but it kept circulating and reached Snapchat.
• Arizona sixth-grade teacher Luke Red says the student who made an AI image of him kissing another male teacher received a three-day suspension, the maximum first-time penalty for sexual harassment under the district's handbook.
• Employment lawyer Donna Ballman calls student-made sexual deepfakes of a teacher a "clear case" of workplace sexual harassment under federal law, but says schools have "no blueprint" for how to respond.
• TikTok did not remove the accounts Luke Red reported, since he flagged them for being under its 13-plus age minimum rather than for the content, and gave WIRED no comment before publication; Snap says it has "established processes" for such reports.

Why it matters

Generative AI has made it trivial for a student to put a teacher's face on a sexualized image or splice their likeness into an explicit video, using nothing more than a phone and an existing public photo. WIRED's reporting shows this is not a hypothetical: five cases across the US and UK, documented by WIRED, describe the same pattern of harassment, personal distress and disrupted work. The federal Take It Down Act criminalizes distributing this kind of nonconsensual content, and employment lawyer Donna Ballman says it can meet the legal bar for workplace sexual harassment, but no law tells a school how to investigate, discipline or protect a targeted teacher, so each district is left improvising its own response, or not responding at all.

Who it affects

Most directly, the teachers targeted: a California substitute, an Arizona sixth-grade teacher, a UK college counselor, and two further teachers, one interviewed anonymously and one described only secondhand, plus the colleagues and administrators pulled into each school's response. More broadly, the pattern suggests anyone in a public-facing job with a findable photo online is a plausible target, since none of the five cases required more than an existing public image. School handbooks are affected too: districts are applying discipline codes written for physical or text-based harassment to AI-generated sexual content, with no dedicated legal or procedural guidance for it. The students who make the material face consequences of their own, from in-school suspension to eventually leaving the district, though the source gives no ages for the accused students and no data on how widespread this behavior is beyond the five cases described.

How to use it

The account offers a few concrete moves, each drawn from what these teachers actually did. Getting students who follow the offending account to report it, rather than relying only on the targeted teacher's own report, got the mid-twenties teacher's impersonating account taken down quickly. Putting concerns in writing to administrators, as DeSantiago did in a message to his principal, creates a record that outlasts a verbal assurance to "take care of it." And knowing the legal footing helps: Donna Ballman notes federal antidiscrimination law obliges an employer, including a school, to keep the workplace free of sexual harassment, which gives a targeted teacher grounds to push for action even where a district has no written policy covering AI-generated content specifically.

How solid is it

This is on-the-record interview reporting, not a statistical study. WIRED spoke directly with four teachers: Luis DeSantiago and Luke Red under their full names, Alice by first name only at her own request, and a fourth granted full anonymity because her district had not authorized her to speak. A fifth case, a teacher in her sixties, is relayed secondhand through the anonymous teacher and was not independently confirmed with the woman herself. None of the two school districts or the UK college involved responded to WIRED's requests for comment, so their side of each account is missing from the story. Snap answered on the record through a named spokesperson; TikTok did not comment before publication. The piece documents a pattern across five cases, not a prevalence estimate for how common this behavior is nationally or internationally.

Risks and caveats

The source names no AI tool, app or model behind any of the images, so this should not be read as pointing at one specific product. No school district, city or institution is named except Los Banos, California, and no ages are given for any of the accused students. DeSantiago's case involved contact with police, but the article reports no charges or police outcome. In the mid-twenties teacher's account, it is not clear whether the TikTok account eventually removed is the same one earlier described as "quickly taken down," a recreated version, or the one used to target the assistant principal, since the article does not disambiguate. And because every account here comes from the targeted teacher's side, with the accused students not interviewed and most districts declining to comment, the record of exactly what happened and why is necessarily one-sided.

“When I finally saw the image, that's when it felt like a punch to the gut.”

— Luis DeSantiago, substitute teacher, to WIRED