Baldwin: Teen boys are making graphic AI porn of their underage classmates. We need to do better.

When I was 16, a boy used my photo in a horrible meme and sent it to everyone he knew. If that incident happened today, he probably would have used it in illegal AI pornography.

When I was 16, a boy tried to ruin my life with a photo. I’m lucky it wasn’t worse. Picture: Supplied

When I was 16, a boy took a photo of me, turned it into a gruesome meme and sent it to everyone he knew.

It was not an explicit photo. It was only my Facebook profile photo, a lovely picture of myself and my best friend at a party.

This boy cropped my friend out, then added text to the photo calling me horrific names. He sent it to all his contacts. He was 17 at the time.

He was a deeply, deeply troubled boy. The night before he sent the photo around, he spewed out a torrent of anathema, including the hope I would die in a car accident.

Why did he do and say these things? Because I rejected him romantically.

I was completely and utterly disinterested, not attracted to him in the slightest. For this sin, he wanted to punish me.

I didn’t want to date a teenage boy, so he tried to ruin my life. Picture: Supplied

From our first meeting when I was 14, his behaviour had grown increasingly disturbing and obsessive. He expressed his affections often, and I did what I could as a young teenager to let him down politely.

He texted me daily with provocative, graphic updates of his poor mental health. He asked me out on dates regularly. He pestered me for hugs. He always tried to sit directly beside me so we touched. He sabotaged my romantic relationships.

Things escalated rapidly. What had started out as a ‘harmless crush’ had grotesquely morphed into violent threats and abusive speech.

Despite the fierce efforts of my family, he was granted impunity due to adults who made excuses for him. His school was not informed – dare I say, the police were not informed – and he was unpunished, apart from receiving a reprimand.

It is of this story that I think when I see headlines about teenage boys using AI to create sexually explicit images of their classmates to send around the school.

To have a peer illegally create AI pornography and send it around the school is abuse I cannot fathom. Picture: Supplied

I cannot even begin to fathom the all-encompassing horror, the nausea and the terror of being subjected to such inconceivably vile abuse.

We’re talking about illegal, fake, pedophilic images of 14-year-olds having sex, created and disseminated by their classmates.

The worst I experienced was having a fully-clothed photo of myself sent to a network of strangers – but I completely believe this boy would have gone down the AI route if the technology had been available at the time.

There are so many factors feeding this issue.

It’s “boys will be boys”. It’s easy access to far-right misogynistic online spaces. It’s the accessibility of pornography. It’s the lack of regulation and ease of AI. It’s parents in denial. It’s schools who won’t adequately punish students.

It’s girls who aren’t listened to.

It’s girls being told to “give him a chance”, even when they don’t want to.

There are many factors feeding this issue. Picture: Supplied

In my experience, I spoke out countless times about how uncomfortable that boy made me. I spent years being chased, avoiding being alone with him, feeling sick when he approached me.

The teenage girls of today go to school and worry about whether their male peers will illegally doctor their faces onto graphic AI pornography.

That is unthinkable, unforgivable, indefensible.

This week, a year 8 student at Mount Scopus College went on an AI porn spree with his classmates’ faces. While individual school cultures do play a part in this issue, it’s a far broader problem than that.

The young women on the receiving end of that boy’s vitriol will suffer years of trauma. They will likely suffer anxiety, depression, eating disorders and worse.

A teenage boy at Mount Scopus inflicted this abuse upon his classmates this week. Picture: Supplied.

Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This is exactly what is happening.

Whatever we’re doing to protect women is not working. The channel needs to change. We need education, intervention and action and we need it yesterday.

These young women are vulnerable, scared and they are not being taken seriously by those who are able to help.

It is often thought that girls “naturally” mature faster than boys do.

I understand the science of brain development rates between males and females, but I also know people hide behind this science to shirk accountability. It’s more than science.

Girls deserve more childhood. They deserve more time to be innocent.

Women are forced to grow up faster than men because they are launched into a world of psychological sexual warfare just as they hit puberty. They mature faster because they have to.

Girls are thrust into mature situations and are propelled into a life where being abused and harassed is their fault. Of course girls have to grow up faster.

There are 15-year-old boys in Melbourne rating their peers as “unrapeable”. That is a bloody disgrace. Boys do not have a right to girls. Girls have a right to say no.

Until this is the predominant message being preached, we’re failing them both.

Grace Baldwin is a Herald Sun reporter