When a Louisiana middle school girl was expelled following a fight over AI-generated deepfake nudes that male classmates had made of her, reporters Heather Hollingsworth and Jack Brook went beyond the headlines to expose how a new form of technology-fueled abuse is harming young people — and how systems meant to protect them can instead make things worse.
Hollingsworth and Brook’s deeply reported story uncovered the failures of adults to initially recognize what had happened. Their work traced how deepfake images were circulated, how the school responded, and how the girl — the victim — was the one who ultimately faced the harshest consequences.
Brook obtained the police incident report, audio from the school expulsion hearing, and interviewed the girl’s father on video. Hollingsworth interviewed experts in cyberbullying and deepfake technology, filed records requests for school district training policies, and sifted through hours of recordings to reconstruct the timeline of events.
The reporting captured both the technological complexity and the human toll of deepfake abuse, and stood out for its empathy toward the child at the center of the case. The final package provided readers with a comprehensive, thoughtful look at how institutions are struggling to keep up with rapidly evolving AI threats — and the consequences that can fall on the wrong person.
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