Following controversy surrounding Elon Musk’s Grok for its inappropriate content, a teacher has shared an unsettling experience where an eight-year-old student created deepfake pornographic images of her involving other school staff.
Musk, the owner of X, faced criticism after reports emerged that his Grok AI tool was being misused on the platform to generate explicit images of minors.
Responding to the allegations, Musk stated that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.”
The incident described by the teacher highlights concerns beyond just the misuse of Grok.
The teacher recounted that an innocent online image of her, taken near a mountain, was manipulated by a young student to create inappropriate content.
According to the teacher, the young girl initially shared the image with her, which seemed harmless at the time, but eventually led to a more disturbing situation.
Writing for iNews, the teacher, who had been working at a primary school in London for five years, mentioned she was familiar with the student as she had taught her in previous years.
Describing the student as ‘quite a strange character,’ the teacher noted the girl seemed mature for her age and appeared to possess more knowledge than her peers.
The situation escalated when she was informed about an explicit video circulating among a WhatsApp group used by students, allegedly featuring her and two colleagues. This prompted the teacher to investigate and discover the student had created the material.
The teacher revealed that when confronted, the child appeared unremorseful, even smirking, and due to insufficient support from the school, the teacher ultimately resigned from her job.
She wrote: “She was just sniggering in the school meetings with her parents; it was all very strange. What was most disturbing was how incredibly young she was: eight or nine years old. To even know what a threesome is at that age is shocking enough, never mind creating a deepfake.”
Though she never saw the video as it was deleted from the child’s device, conversations between the child’s mother and school officials indicated there was more explicit content present.
Despite this, the two male colleagues depicted in the video chose not to pursue further action, leaving the teacher feeling unsupported.
She explained: “The assistant head, who was also featured in the video, didn’t want to involve the union. The other teacher, a male teacher, also didn’t want to push it; it was really just me following it up.
“Some schools are cautious when things like this happen. They don’t want drama or any bad press leaking out. This meant the girl wasn’t excluded (not even just for the day), and she wasn’t encouraged to apologise. There were no real consequences for her at all. There was just a single meeting with her mum.”
The teacher continued: “‘They’re just children’, they told me. I found that really upsetting; what they had done was wrong. Without much rigmarole, then, I was back in class again, teaching all the children who had seen the video. It was very awkward and uncomfortable.
“I got advice from the union, who said that what had happened was illegal and that the school should have followed it up properly. I had another meeting with the school, but they didn’t want to pursue it any further. A year later, I left the school. I just felt very alone.”
She is now supporting initiatives to implement laws preventing children under 16 from accessing social media.