Police in Spain arrest schoolboy for making AI nude images of classmates

Spanish police said on Sunday they were investigating a 17-year-old on suspicion of using artificial intelligence to deepfake nude images of female classmates for sale.

Sixteen young women at an educational institute in Valencia, in southeastern Spain, complained about the AI-generated images of them which were circulating on social media and online.

In December, a teenage girl complained to police that AI-generated video and faked photos resembling her "completely naked" were posted on a social media account started under her name.

“Photos of various people, all of them minors, appeared on this account. All these photos had been modified from the originals, which had been manipulated so that the people in them appeared completely naked,” the Spanish Civil Guard said in a statement on Sunday.

A 17-year-old boy is under investigation for alleged corruption of minors.

The Spanish government said in March said it would put forward a law to treat such deepfaked sexual imagery created by AI without consent as a crime but the bill has so far not been passed by parliament.

In September 2023, Spain was shocked when 15 minors in Extremadura, in southwest Spain, were investigated for using AI to produce fake naked images of their female schoolmates. They were later sentenced to a year's probation.