A high school athletic director has been accused of using AI to create a fake recording of the principal engaging in racist and anti-Semitic speech.
Dazhon Darien allegedly imitated Eric Eiswert’s voice with artificial intelligencein a clip that went viral and was widely shared on social media.
In the doctored audio, it sounded like the principal had said that “ungrateful” black students “can’t come out of a paper bag” — and that he had also denigrated Jews.
Detectives believe Darien faked the clip as revenge following a conversation about his poor job performance and a suggestion that his contract at the school would not be renewed.
Those discussions followed allegations that Darien paid his roommate approximately £1,500 ($1,900) in school funds under the false pretense of coaching the girls’ soccer team.
Court documents say the recording had “profound implications”: Mr Eiswert being suspended, his family being put at “significant risk” and police officers providing security at his home.
It also sparked a wave of hateful messages on social media and a flood of phone calls to Pikesville High School in Baltimore County, Maryland.
The charging documents stated: “Teachers expressed concerns that recording devices may have been installed in various locations throughout the school. »
Mr. Eiswert had insisted he did not make the remarks – and a detective discovered that Darien used broad language patterns such as OpenAI And Bingchatwhich can “show users the steps to take to create synthetic media.”
Officials say this is one of the first cases of its kind in the United States and are calling for new laws to guard against the technology as AI becomes more powerful.
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Scott Shellenberger, Baltimore County State’s Attorney, added: “We also need to look more broadly at how this technology can be used and abused to harm others.” »
Darien was arrested Wednesday evening before boarding a plane at the Baltimore airport.
A professor at the University of Colorado Denver told detectives the recording “contained traces of AI-generated content with human editing after the fact, which added background noises for realism.”
A second opinion from a University of California, Berkeley professor told police that “multiple recordings had been grouped together.”
Baltimore County officials are now recommending that Darien’s position at the school be eliminated.
