Trigger warning: This story mentions sexual abuse.

As MVHS alum ‘25 Lotus Wu scrolls through the Discord server, the app’s dark backdrop throws the white text in stark contrast. Message after message flashes across her screen — all paired with usernames like “rape all women,” “I f*** children at the park” and “Lotus’s Hubby.” Sexual remarks, jokes and photos pile up, and she is hit with the realization that this server was made for the sole purpose of sexualizing her.

Toward the end of her junior year, Wu was contacted by a Lynbrook High School student, who informed her of a Discord server created about her. After she joined the server, Wu found more than 20 students sharing photos of her and making sexual comments about her body. Wu immediately took screenshots to document what she saw with the intent of pursuing disciplinary action. By the end, she had more than 70 screenshots. Later, the student who alerted her also claimed that some members had created or circulated deepfakes and AI-generated nudes of her. 

Initially, Wu was hesitant to confront her parents about what she had found out, afraid that they would demand she take her Instagram account down and steer away from all social media. Although Wu herself had also considered taking down her social media accounts or taking more serious protective measures, she ultimately decided against it.

“I don’t know how much more I can do,” Wu said. “I don’t want to not be on social media just because of the fear of having AI deepfakes made of me. But I feel like nowadays, it’s a little unavoidable.”

With rapid advancements in generative AI, deepfake content has become more widespread, identified as a major global risk by the World Economic Forum in 2024. People are now confronting more and more AI-generated images replicating the likeness of others, which primarily target teenage girls. A report by Thorn, a child safety nonprofit, found that 2% of surveyed youth created deepfakes. Among them, 74% targeted women and more than 30% depicted minors. Over half were shared with peers.

School districts across the country are increasingly facing cases involving sexual deepfakes made of students. Recently, the Beverly Hills Unified School District in Calif. expelled five middle school students for creating and circulating explicit deepfakes of female classmates. Deepfake victims in Laguna Beach High School report feeling that responses from their administrative board were insufficient.

California law guarantees all students an education free from discrimination and harassment, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, and requires each district to appoint a Title IX coordinator. In FUHSD, Title IX cases are handled by the Director of Education and Title IX Coordinator Trudy Gross, who says that determining whether a situation qualifies as a Title IX case can sometimes be difficult.

“If a circumstance is simply persistent or pervasive, then it might mean corrective action will not occur immediately and that further investigation will be needed,” Gross said. “But something like sexual assault, sexual battery and rape are the types of situations that would be considered under Title IX or under the sexual harassment policy. They are severe and would absolutely be addressed immediately, and because those terms are also within the penal code, the district response would be to work alongside law enforcement as well.”

Gross says that each case can be evaluated based on how often incidents occur, whether they involve one or multiple offenders, if the incidents differ from person to person and the extent to which the situation disrupts a student’s education. However, according to Gross, the California Education Code specifies that a school’s jurisdiction extends only to conduct occurring during school hours or that directly affects a student’s ability to learn. Incidents that occur entirely online or off-campus are often difficult to determine whether they fall under the school’s responsibility to address.

Before eventually deciding to inform her parents about what she discovered, Wu emailed the evidence to Vice Principal Mike White and later met with him in person to explain the situation. Wu said she would have preferred more transparency throughout the process, but White notified her that he had reached out to LHS’ principal.

“At least 20 boys were involved in this, but only two of them got in trouble, and they only got a one-day suspension,” Wu said. “I know that, because it’s the end of the year, it’s hard to give people detention or suspensions because it’s finals season and it would just be very complicated. But I didn’t feel like I received justice. There were barely any repercussions or punishment toward them, so I felt it was really unfair.”

Later, Wu received a call from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, which contacted her after LHS reported the incident and offered to investigate further. At the time, Wu said she was still unaware of the alleged deepfakes, and because the server had already been forcefully taken down by the school district, she and her family thought it was unnecessary to open a case. She notes that had she known about the alleged deepfakes — or learned of the situation earlier in the school year — she likely would have filed a report herself or pursued legal action.

“At that point, it was already the end of my junior year, and I was just so burnt out,” Wu said. “I was so drained and didn’t have time to really process it. In senior year, I was busy with college applications, and by the second semester, the incident just seemed so far away — there wasn’t really a point anymore.”

According to School Resource Officer Aalok Patel, a deputy sheriff with the SCC Sheriff’s Office, if the department had been notified of the alleged deepfakes, they would have opened a case themselves, as both the possession and distribution of child pornography is illegal. Patel noted that while the FUHSD has not made any new concrete procedures and consequences for cases regarding AI deepfakes, he says that the process is handled similarly to cases involving online harassment, with the first step being an investigation rather than immediate disciplinary action.

“For law enforcement to make an actual arrest, we need probable cause,” Patel said. “Witnesses are very important. With witnesses, even though there’s no physical evidence of a crime, we have probable cause to believe something did occur. We will take the perpetrator’s phone and do some forensic search of the photo to try to locate it. And if they do something inappropriate? Well, not just us police officers but also the FBI will do, hopefully, whatever we can to locate those images and take them off the internet.”

Patel explains that although he has handled — and continues to handle — cases involving deepfakes, the technology is still new enough that FUHSD has not yet developed procedures specifically tailored to them. In the cases he has addressed so far, which were less severe than Wu’s, he followed the standard Title IX process, which includes giving the perpetrator situation-specific education and warnings. He emphasizes that when misused, deepfakes can rise to the level of an arrestable offense and felony. 

Although FUHSD has not yet adapted to deepfakes, Calif. has taken actions to protect students. Patel mentions the two of the first state laws passed to prevent the misuse of AI replicating people’s likeness are Assembly Bills 2602 and 1836. A larger measure, Senate Bill 942 — the California AI Transparency Act — requires AI detection tools to be made publicly accessible. Most recently, on Oct. 13, 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 853, which updates the AI Transparency Act by creating new obligations for AI-hosting platforms and device manufacturers to clearly label AI features and raise technical safeguards.

Gross says that disciplinary action for cases falling under Title IX also depends on the circumstances. Sometimes, the district provides counseling for both parties, allowing them to reconcile. Other times, the district recognizes that the victim may not want any contact with the perpetrator and prioritizes keeping them separated, making it the perpetrator’s responsibility to avoid the victim on school grounds by assigning specific routes to the perpetrator around campus. Traditional measures like suspension or expulsion are also considered, but they are not preferred — counseling is generally the district’s primary approach.

“The district wants to learn different ways to interact,” Gross said. “We don’t just want to suspend and move on because we want this to not happen again — not only to the victim but to anybody. So a lot of what we try to do is restorative, where we’re trying to create new behavior patterns so that this doesn’t repeat again.”

Ultimately, Wu expresses gratitude for the support she received from friends, a trusted teacher and her parents during the remainder of high school. However, although she believes that the timing of the incident happening during a busy period of finals and college applications helped lessen its immediate impact, her experience still affected how she now views social media and online safety.

“I saw pictures of them in the server,” Wu said. “Those kids do not look like they would do anything wrong. But the development of AI and this whole thing with deepfakes is really scary, and I’ve heard of people in our school who have been affected by it. Make sure you’re double-checking your social media — and if you hear anything bad about someone, immediately block them. Take extra steps with cybersecurity.”