An athletic director at a Baltimore-area high school was arrested Thursday after using artificial intelligence software, police said, to make a racist and anti-Semitic audio clip impersonating the school’s principal.
Dazhon Darien, the athletic director at Pikesville High School, fabricated the recording — including a tirade about “ungrateful black kids who can’t get out of a paper bag” — in an attempt to defame director, Eric Eiswert, according to the Baltimore County Police Department.
The fake recording, posted on Instagram in mid-January, quickly spread Baltimore County Public Schools, which is the 22nd largest school district in the country and serves more than 100,000 students. As the district investigated, Mr. Eiswert, who denied making the comments, was inundated with threats to his safety, police said. He was also placed on administrative leave, the school district said.
Mr. Darien now faces charges including disrupting school operations and stalking the principal.
Mr. Eiswert referred a request for comment to a trade group for principals, the Council of Administrative and Supervisory Employees, which did not return a reporter’s call. Mr. Darien, who posted bond Thursday, could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Baltimore County case is just the latest indication of escalating AI abuse in schools. Many cases include deepfakes, or digitally altered videos, audio files, or images that can appear convincingly real.
Since last fall, schools across the United States have been scrambling to resolve troubling deepfake incidents in which male students used AI “nudification” apps to create fake nude images of their classmates. class, some of whom were middle school girls as young as 12 years old. The fake voice incident in Baltimore County points to another AI risk for the nation’s schools — this time for veteran educators and district leaders.
False revenge smears can happen in any workplace, but they pose a particularly worrying specter for school officials charged with the protection and education of children. A Baltimore County official warned Thursday that the rapid spread of new generative AI tools is outpacing school protections and state laws.
“We are also entering a deeply disturbing new frontier,” Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski said Thursday in public comments about the arrest. He added that community leaders need to “take a broader look at how this technology can be used and abused to harm other people.”
The police account of the Baltimore County case shows how quickly pernicious and profound misinformation can spread in schools, causing lasting harm to educators, students and families.
According to police documents, Mr. Darien developed a grievance against Mr. Eiswert in December after the principal began investigating him. Mr. Darien had authorized a district payment of $1,916 to his roommate, police said, “under the guise” that the roommate worked as an assistant coach for the Pikesville girls soccer team.
Shortly afterward, police said, Mr. Darien used the school district’s Internet services to search for artificial intelligence tools, including from OpenAI, the developer of the ChatGPT chatbot, and Microsoft’s Bing Chat.
(The New York Times for follow-up OpenAI and its partner Microsoft, in December, for copyright infringement on news content related to AI systems.)
In mid-January, Mr. Darien emailed a fake audio clip posing as the principal to himself and two other high school employees, according to police. The email, with the subject line “Pikesville Principal – Disturbing Recording,” was sent from a Gmail account that appeared to belong to an unknown third party but was linked to Mr. Darien’s cell phone number , according to police documents.
One of those school employees then sent the fabricated recording to news organizations and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, according to police documents. She also forwarded it to a student who “she knew would quickly spread the message on various social media sites and throughout the school,” the documents state.
Soon, an Instagram account that tracks local crime posted the fake racist audio, claiming it was a “speech about black students” and naming the principal as the speaker. The audio clip, which lasts less than a minute, has been shared more than 27,000 times and generated more than 2,800 comments, many of them calling for the director to be fired.
Police say this deepfake rant had “profound repercussions,” straining trust between Pikesville High families, teachers and administrators.
Distraught and angry parents and students flooded the school with calls. Some teachers, according to police, were concerned that “recording devices may have been installed in various locations throughout the school.” To address security concerns, police have increased their presence at the school.
The police also provided some oversight of the safety of Mr. Eiswert, who received an avalanche of harassing messages and phone calls, some threatening him and his family with violence.
In public comments at a school board meeting in January, William Burke, executive director of the Council of Administrative and Supervisory Employees, which represents the superintendent, said social media and news media have allowed commenters to convict Mr. Eiswert without “any evidence and no evidence.” no responsibility.
“Please don’t rush to judgment,” Mr. Burke pleaded. “Please make the investigation safe and fair.”
Two outside experts who later analyzed the recording on behalf of the Baltimore County Police Department concluded that the audio clip had been manipulated. An expert said it contained “traces of AI-generated content with human editing after the fact,” according to police documents.
