Arrested by Baltimore County Police. The former Pikesville High School athletic director was accused Thursday morning of using artificial intelligence to impersonate Principal Eric Issort, leading the public to believe that Issort made racist and anti-Semitic comments behind closed doors. have done
According to the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office, Dazon Darien was charged with disrupting a school activity after investigators determined that Darien had faked the voice of Assort and circulated the audio on social media in January. What did Darren's nickname, DJ, was among the names he allegedly mentioned in the fictitious audio clips.
Eiswert's voice, which police and AI experts believe was simulated, made derogatory comments about black students and the surrounding Jewish community, widely circulated on social media.
Questions about the authenticity of the audio quickly followed. Police wrote in charging documents that Darien accessed the school's network on multiple occasions in December and January to explore OpenAI tools, and used “large language models” that were “deep “learning”, which involves acquiring large amounts of data from various sources. The Internet can recognize text entered by the user, and generate conversational results.” They also linked Darren to an email account that distributed the recording.
Many current and former students believed Esort was responsible for the offensive remarks, while former colleagues condemned the audio and defended Esort's role. Eiswert himself has denied the comments, saying the comments are not in line with his views.
The audio, posted on the popular Instagram account. The murders prompted an investigation by Baltimore County Public Schools and the Baltimore County Police. Eiswert has not worked at the school since the investigation began.
The voice refers to “the ungrateful black kids who can't check their way out of a paper bag” and questions how difficult it is for these students to meet grade-level expectations. the speaker Uses the names of people who appear to be staff members and says they should not have been hired, and that He must get rid of the other person “somehow”.
“And if I get one more complaint from another Jew in this community, I'm going to go the other way,” Awaz said.
Police say the clip was received by three teachers the night before it went viral. The first was Darien. A third said she received an email and then a call from Darren and teacher Shayna Ravenel asking her to check her email. Ravenel told police that she forwarded the email to a student's cell phone, “which she knew would quickly spread to various social media sites and throughout the school,” and that she The media and the NAACP were also dispatched, police said.
He doesn't mention receiving it from Darren until confronted about his involvement. Ravenel has not been charged with a crime.
Superintendent Miriam Rogers called the comments at the time “disturbing” and “extremely offensive and inappropriate statements about African-American students, Pikesville High School staff, and Pikesville's Jewish community.”
Billy Burke, head of the Council of Administrative and Supervisory Employees, the union that represents Assort, was the only official who produced the audio with AI.
Burke said he was disappointed at the public's assumption of Assort's guilt. At a January school board meeting, she said the principal needed a police presence at her home because she and her family had been harassed and threatened. Burke also received harassing emails, he said at the time.
Experts in audio and video forgery detection told The Banner in March that there was overwhelming evidence that the voice was produced by AI. They noted its flat tone, unusually clear background noises and lack of sustained breath sounds or pauses as hallmarks of AI. They also ran the audio through several different AI detection techniques, which consistently concluded that it was fake, although they couldn't be 100% certain.
With AI voice generation tools now widely available online, a one-minute recording of someone's voice can be enough to replicate it with a $5-a-month AI tool, the Nieman Journalism Lab reported in February.
There are regulations in place to prevent AI imitation, known as deepfakes, and few offenders are prosecuted.