RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — More than two dozen North Carolina State University sorority members said their photos were manipulated and posted to a pornography site, according to a warrant.
NC State police are investigating the incident. The November warrant states many of the images depict the women’s faces artificially imposed on nude women performing sexual acts.
According to the warrant, the user uploaded the videos to a site called EroMe.com with album titles that referenced NC State and included victims’ names. The detective who requested the warrant asked Google for a variety of records related to the Gmail user the website said posted the content.
In the warrant, the detective said images created by artificial intelligence fall under North Carolina’s general statute against the disclosure of private images.
Artificial intelligence expert Cynthia Rudin, a Duke University Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, said it’s become simple for anyone to make such content. While the content is easy to make, she is concerned because it’s hard for people to protect themselves against it.
According to Rudin, part of the issue is there is code publicly available specifically for the sole purpose of having a clothed body become nude. She has never heard of an instance in which someone was punished for providing that code publicly.
“There’s no way that a person can prevent someone else from doing that because the code is available,” Rudin said. “If there’s an image of them anywhere, that image could be used for this purpose.
Kevin Roughton, the Special Agent in Charge of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation’s Computer Crimes Unit, said the issue has been present for years with photoshop, but has evolved with AI.
“As AI has erupted here in the last couple of years, that technology has just enhanced even more become so much simpler and much better quality of what could be produced,” Roughton said.
The SBI is not working on this case, but Roughton said when it comes to investigators tracking down who posted content, there’s usually some type of trail.
“Rarely anything you do on the Internet can be completely anonymous,” Roughton said. “Whether it’s extraction and analysis of what somebody’s done on a phone, computer forensics, or the bread crumbs of the internet, usually there’s traces, if there’s not full pieces of evidence that could indicate who may be responsible for this.”
The university said it found out about this in October when the incident was first reported to NC State police, writing in a statement:
“In October, when Fraternity and Sorority Life was alerted of the situation, a message of support including relevant university resources were provided to all Panhellenic females in collaboration with The Women’s Center, The Office of Student Life and Advocacy, Student Legal Services, The Office of Equal Opportunity, and the NC State Police Department. University teams continue to be of service for those impacted.”
A spokesperson said the university could not disclose further details as of Tuesday due to the ongoing investigation.
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