By Daniella White
Two students have been suspended after fake sexually explicit images of up to 60 students from a school in Melbourne’s north-west were circulated online.
Victoria Police said an unknown number of school formal photos of female students at Gladstone Park Secondary College had been “inappropriately manipulated using artificial intelligence” before being released on the internet.
Manipulated photos of year 11 students from Gladstone Park Secondary College were circulated online.Credit: Facebook
In a letter to parents, principal Veronica Hoy said year 11 students had been sharing the nude images through social media and group chats.
“This kind of misogynistic and disrespectful behaviour is entirely unacceptable at our school, and appropriate disciplinary action has been taken,” she said.
“Further, please be advised that the sending of real or fake nude images of people under the age of 18 is a crime.”
Detective Sergeant Simon Garner, of the Fawkner sexual offences and child abuse investigation team, described the images as vulgar and “quite despicable”.
He said police were still determining how many students had been affected and that officers had not yet spoken to the two suspended students.
“We are aware there are a number of students involved,” Garner said.
“At this particular time, we don’t know how many photos were taken, we don’t know how many photos were used.
“I’ve heard anything up to 60 [students could be affected], but also as low as 10 to 20.”
Police were first made aware of the matter on Thursday afternoon and are working to establish the number of victims involved, a police spokesperson said.
“Police are currently providing support to identified victims, their families and the school,” they said.
A Department of Education spokesman said misogynistic and disrespectful behaviour was unacceptable in any Victorian school.
“Gladstone Park Secondary College has taken appropriate disciplinary action and wellbeing support has been offered to any students who need it,” he said.
“Alongside parents, carers and the wider community, schools play a critical role in stamping out disrespectful behaviour – last year we launched updated Respectful Relationships materials to help students navigate misogyny and hate online, embed equality into every school and model respectful behaviours.”
The Age has confirmed that two year 11 students have been suspended, pending a police investigation.
Investigations into the matter are ongoing. The school has been contacted for comment.
Sharing digitally altered deepfake pornographic images can now attract a jail term of up to six years, or seven years for those who also created them, under laws that passed federal parliament in August last year.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said at the time that digitally created and altered sexually explicit material was a deeply distressing form of abuse, particularly against women and girls.
According to the eSafety Commissioner, a deepfake is a digital photo, video or sound file of a real person that has been edited to create a false depiction of them.
Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she was aware of the incident at the school and was engaging with Victorian Police on the matter.
“We have also reached out to our contacts at the Victorian Department of Education to offer our support to them and the school,” she said.
Grant said that in 2023-24, the commission received 7270 reports about image-based abuse and requested removal from more than 947 locations across 191 platforms and services.
“We were successful in having 98 per cent of material removed,” she said.
ESafety recently announced new industry standards to tackle harmful online content, including deepfakes and “nudify apps” that use AI to generate explicit material depicting a child under 18.
Grant said the new standards would hold tech companies accountable, requiring them to take stronger steps to prevent misuse of their platforms for generating or distributing harmful content, including AI-generated abuse material.
The incident comes after fake nude images of 50 Bacchus Marsh Grammar girls were shared on social media in June last year, leading to the arrest of a teen.
In that case, faces of the girls were used in images of nudes generated by AI and then put on Instagram and shared via Snapchat.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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