If an eighth-grader in California shared a nude photo of a classmate with friends without consent, the student could conceivably be prosecuted under state laws dealing with child pornography and disorderly conduct. If the photo is an AI-generated deepfake, however, it's not clear that any state law would apply. According to the district, the images used real faces of students atop AI-generated nude bodies. Lt. Andrew Myers, a spokesman for the Beverly Hills police, said no arrests have been made and the investigation is continuing. Michael Bregy said the district's investigation into the episode is in its final stages.

A new AI-powered software tool makes it easy for anyone to generate realistic nude images of women simply by feeding the program a picture of the intended target wearing clothes. The app is called DeepNude and it's the latest example of AI-generated deepfakes being used to create compromising images of unsuspecting women. The software was first spotted by Motherboard's Samantha Cole, and is available to download free for Windows, with a premium version that offers better resolution output images available for $99. Both the free and premium versions of the app add watermarks to the AI-generated nudes that clearly identify them as "fake." But in the images created by Motherboard, this watermark is easy to remove.