A Maryland high school athletic director has been accused of using artificial intelligence to impersonate a principal in an audio recording containing racist and anti-Semitic comments, authorities said Thursday.
Authorities said the case appears to be one of the first of its kind in the country and called for new laws to protect against the technology. Experts also warned that artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly powerful, while the ability to detect it may lag behind without more resources.
Dazhon Darien spoofed the voice of the Pikesville High School principal in response to conversations the men had about Darien’s poor job performance and whether his contract would be renewed, Baltimore County police said.
Concerns include allegations that Darien paid his roommate $1,900 in tuition under the false pretense that he would coach the girls’ soccer team, police said.
Darien spoofed an audio clip that made it sound like the principal was frustrated with black students and their test-taking abilities, police wrote in charging documents. They said the recording was also intended to capture key disparaging Jewish individuals and two teachers.
The audio clip quickly spread on social media and had “profound consequences,” according to the court documents, with the director placed on leave. The recording put the director and his family at “significant risk” while police officers provided security at his home, according to authorities.
The recording also sparked a wave of hate-filled posts on social media and a flood of phone calls to the school, police said. Activities were disrupted for some time and some employees felt unsafe.
“Teachers have expressed concerns that recording devices may have been placed in various locations throughout the school,” the charging documents say.
Darien, 31, faces charges including theft, disrupting school activities, stalking and retaliating against a witness, according to court documents.
Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said the case appears to be one of the first of its kind nationwide involving artificial intelligence that his office was able to uncover. He said the Maryland Legislature may need to update state laws to catch up to the new technology’s nefarious capabilities.
For example, the charge of disrupting school activities carries “only a sentence of six months in jail,” Shellenberger said.
“But we must also look more broadly at how this technology can be used and abused to harm other people,” the prosecutor said.
Baltimore County detectives had asked experts to analyze Darien’s recording, according to the charges against him.
A University of Colorado-Denver professor told police it contained “traces of AI-generated content with human editing afterwards, adding background noise for realism,” according to court records.
A second opinion from a professor at the University of California-Berkley told police that “multiple recordings were linked together,” according to the records.
A Baltimore County detective found that Darien had used major language models such as OpenAI and Bingchat, which “can tell users what steps to take to create synthetic media,” according to court documents.
Online court records for Darien show he posted $5,000 bond on Thursday. The documents did not list an attorney who might be able to speak on his behalf.
Darien was arrested Wednesday evening before boarding a plane at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough said. Darien was stopped because of the way he packed his firearm for the flight, which led officers to learn he had a warrant for his arrest, McCullough said.
McCullough said authorities entered the arrest warrant for Darien into the system Wednesday evening with plans to execute it Thursday morning. The chief said he did not know why Darien took a flight to Houston and did not suggest he was trying to escape.
The Baltimore County School System is recommending Darien’s termination, Superintendent Myriam Rogers said Thursday.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly powerful yet “very easy to use,” says Siwei Lyu, director of a media forensics lab at the University at Buffalo.
“You can basically upload the voice of any subject to this platform,” Lyu told The Associated Press on Thursday. “And then you can give it text and you can start creating voices of that person.”
A recording of someone talking for a minute or two can be taken from social media and used to mimic someone’s voice, Lyu said, noting that it isn’t always perfect.
Lyu’s research focuses on identifying AI-generated voices and images. He said the models are becoming more powerful as detection methods try to catch up.
“It’s kind of like a perpetual game of cat and mouse,” Lyu said. “But if I project the speed of development based on the current situation, detection will lag because we have fewer resources and don’t get as much attention as the generative side.”