Female Students at Westfield High School in New Jersey Reportedly Targeted with Deepfake Nudes

In October 2023, alleged deepfake nude images of female students were created and shared at Westfield High School in New Jersey. One alleged implicated system in this incident is the Clothoff deepfake app. A victim, Francesca Mani, and her mother, Dorota, began advocating for stronger laws after the school’s response reportedly left perpetrators unaccountable. Since the incident, their advocacy has drawn national attention, leading to trips to Washington, D.C., and bipartisan backing for legislation targeting AI-generated nonconsensual content while calling attention to deficiencies in existing legal protections.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 4 Malicious actors
• Primary risk subdomain: 4.3 Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation

The incident involved the creation of humiliating and sexual deepfake imagery targeting specific high school girls, which fits the definition of targeted harassment and exploitation under sub-domain 4.3.

Additional risk subdomains

• 1.2 Exposure to toxic content: The creation and sharing of explicit pornographic images of minors constitutes exposure to toxic and illegal content.
• 6.5 Governance failure: The reports highlight a significant gap in legal frameworks and regulatory oversight to address and penalize AI-generated non-consensual pornography.

Causal factors

• Entity: Human
• Intent: Intentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The incident was initiated by the intentional actions of human students who chose to use a deployed AI tool to generate non-consensual explicit images of their classmates.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Limited Risk: The reports describe the use of generative AI to create 'deepfakes', which falls under the category of AI-generated content requiring transparency obligations under the EU AI Act.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: Clothoff
• AI purpose: Deepfake Image Generation; Image Generation
• Behaviour type: Tool
• Alleged developer: Developers of Clothoff
• Alleged deployer: Unnamed male students at Westfield High School, Unnamed male students
• Alleged harmed parties: Unnamed female students, Truth, Francesca Mani, Epistemic integrity

Harm severity

Severity ratings are based on this scale.

Highest direct severity in any category: Substantial. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Minor, indirect Minor
• Civil rights: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Privacy: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Minor, indirect Minor
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Substantial, indirect Negligible

Malicious content

Reported: Yes, the reports explicitly describe the creation and distribution of faked pornographic images of minors.

Directly caused: Male students used an AI tool to generate explicit nude images of at least 30 female classmates and shared them in group chats.

Inferred additional harm: It is possible that these generated images remain saved on personal devices or could be uploaded to wider public forums, expanding the reach of the toxic content.

Differential treatment

Reported: Yes, the reports describe female students being targeted and harassed based on their gender.

Directly caused: More than 30 female students were targeted by male classmates who generated non-consensual sexualized images of them, creating a hostile and unsafe educational environment for the girls.

Indirectly caused: Female students felt compelled to restrict their online presence and delete social media accounts, a burden not reported to be shared by male students.

Civil rights

Reported: Yes, the reports describe violations of the victims' privacy and personal dignity.

Directly caused: The non-consensual creation of sexualized deepfakes violated the personal dignity and privacy rights of over 30 underage female students.

Privacy

Reported: Yes, the reports explicitly describe privacy violations where public photos were used without consent to generate explicit content.

Directly caused: The personal photos of over 30 female students were taken from social media without their consent to generate faked nude images, violating their expectation of privacy.

Psychological

Reported: Yes, the reports explicitly describe significant psychological distress, trauma, and anxiety among the targeted female students.

Directly caused: More than 30 female students experienced severe emotional distress, crying in hallways, and feeling humiliated and powerless after learning faked nude images of them were circulated.

Indirectly caused: The broader female student body felt unsafe and anxious, leading some to delete their social media accounts to protect themselves.

Inferred additional harm: It is likely that many of the affected girls will suffer long-term psychological trauma, anxiety, and trust issues regarding digital privacy and peer relationships.

Epistemic

Reported: Yes, the reports describe the creation of highly realistic faked images that misrepresent the victims.

Directly caused: The AI tool generated highly realistic faked nude images of the girls, making it difficult for observers to distinguish real from fake and falsely depicting them in explicit scenarios.

Child sexual exploitation and abuse

Reported: Yes, the reports discuss the incident in the context of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) laws, as the victims were minors.

Directly caused: The incident involved the creation of computer-generated sexually explicit images depicting minors (14-year-old girls), which legal experts noted could fall under child sexual abuse material laws.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 30
• People reportedly exposed: 30

Potential causes

Management

• Delayed Incident Discovery: Incident occurred over summer but was only discovered by school in October.
• Perceived Inadequate Discipline: Parents felt school's response and short suspension was too lenient.
• Lack of Administrative Transparency: School cited confidentiality, leaving parents frustrated and uninformed.

Technology

• Easy Access to AI Tools: Free or cheap AI tools allow anyone to generate deepfakes using an iPhone.
• Lack of Technical Guardrails: Open-source face-swapping and clothes-removing tools lack moderation filters.
• Highly Realistic Generation: AI makes fakes nearly impossible to distinguish from real photographs.

Data Inputs

• Publicly Available Photos: Targeted girls' photos were easily sourced from their public social media.
• Single-Photo Requirements: Modern AI requires only a single photo to generate highly realistic deepfakes.

Human Factors

• Lack of Student Ethical Boundaries: Male classmates used AI to violate peer privacy, viewing it as a joke.
• Digital Bullying Behavior: Sophomore boys targeted female peers, leading to emotional trauma.

Process and Methods

• Unrestricted Device Access: Students can access harmful AI tools anywhere and anytime on personal devices.
• Inadequate School AI Guidelines: School lacked clear guidelines and preventative safeguards on AI technology.

Regulatory Environment

• Lagging Federal and State Laws: No federal or New Jersey laws banned the creation of deepfake pornography.
• Lack of Legal Clarity: Law enforcement struggled due to unclear legality of faked underage images.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The reports are highly consistent across multiple reputable news outlets (WSJ, CNN, CBS, etc.), providing clear details on the nature of the AI tool, the victims, the school's response, and the ongoing legal and police investigations. There is no major conflicting information regarding the core events.
• Ambiguities identified: The exact online tool used is not named in most reports, though the extraction context identifies it as ClothOff. The exact number of boys involved in creating the images remains unconfirmed due to student confidentiality.
• Alternative interpretations: None. The incident is clearly a case of non-consensual deepfake pornography creation targeting minors.

This incident involved male high school students using a consumer AI tool (ClothOff) to generate non-consensual explicit deepfakes of female classmates. While causing severe local psychological harm and highlighting regulatory gaps in AI-generated child sexual abuse material, the national security impact is minor and manageable within standard domestic legal frameworks.

• Overall national security impact: Minor
• Scope: Single nation
• Primary target: United States
• Alleged perpetrator: Group of high school students

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. The incident represents an ongoing strategic concern regarding the proliferation of unregulated consumer AI tools rather than an immediate national security crisis.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. The AI tool was directly controlled by human users who uploaded specific photos to generate the deepfake images.
• Novelty: Evolved capability. Represents an evolved capability where easy-to-use consumer AI tools allow non-technical users to generate highly realistic, non-consensual explicit imagery.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. No physical security threats or critical infrastructure compromises were reported in this incident.
• Information security: Negligible. The incident involved localized peer-to-peer harassment using consumer AI tools, with no evidence of state-sponsored intelligence compromise or systematic information warfare.
• Sovereignty: Negligible. No threats to state authority, territorial sovereignty, or core national government functions were reported.
• Economic security: Negligible. There were no reported economic impacts, strategic technology thefts, or threats to national economic security.
• Societal stability: Minor. The incident caused severe psychological distress and privacy violations for over 30 minors, representing a localized but significant societal harm manageable under standard law enforcement procedures.