Teachers Face Growing Wave of Sexual Deepfakes Created by Their Students

Substitute teacher Luis DeSantiago was working a coffee shop shift in California when he learned that an AI-manipulated intimate image of himself was spreading on social media. What began as a disturbing text from a coworker became a monthslong ordeal involving multiple schools, administrators, and law enforcement—and it's far from an isolated incident.

WIRED has documented the experiences of four educators whose students allegedly created and shared sexualized deepfakes of them without consent. For these teachers, the fallout has shaken their sense of safety, their relationships with students, and their willingness to continue in the profession.

How the Images Spread and Who Creates Them#

When DeSantiago finally saw the image circulating on TikTok, he recognized elements from a selfie he'd taken years earlier—but altered beyond recognition. The person behind it turned out to be a middle school student using their real name in the account. DeSantiago identified other likely participants based on who was engaging with and following the post.

After reporting the incident to administrators, he discovered something worse: a different student had created an impersonation account using his slightly misspelled name as a profile, posting the same image. Over weeks of back-and-forth with school officials and parents, one student was disciplined with in-school suspension. Yet the image continued to spread across multiple platforms—Snapchat, TikTok, and even via AirDrop in classrooms.

Similar patterns emerged across the other cases. A UK college counselor found that students had created a manipulated video showing her undressing. An Arizona sixth-grade teacher reported AI-generated photos of himself with another teacher in a sexual scenario. In each instance, the creators were students who had access to photos and used AI tools to generate the explicit content.

The Legal Framework and Institutional Response#

The Take It Down Act, federal legislation enacted to combat nonconsensual intimate imagery, technically criminalizes distributing "intimate visual depictions of individuals, both authentic and computer-generated" without permission. Creating and sharing such deepfakes could also constitute cyberstalking.

Yet legal remedies have been limited. Employment lawyer Donna Ballman explains that federal antidiscrimination law requires employers to maintain workplaces free from sexual harassment—which these deepfakes clearly constitute. Schools can discipline students or reassign them to different classes. However, Ballman notes there is "no blueprint" for how schools must handle such incidents, and administrators are not obligated to disclose the specifics of any punishment to the affected teacher.