Richmond-Burton High student speaks out on fake, AI-generated photos, says she won’t ‘stay quiet’

Stephanie Essex believes her daughter is one of at least 22 girls from Richmond-Burton High School District 157 who had photos they posted online used to create inappropriate images.

Her daughter, Stevie Hyder, 15, is a sophomore at the school. Since news of the photos broke Tuesday, Hyder has appeared on three Chicago-area news station broadcasts.

“You are giving them power over you if you stay quiet about this,” Hyder said Thursday from her family’s Richmond-area home, just down the road from the high school.

You are giving them power over you if you stay quiet about this.”

—  Richmond-Burton High School student Stevie Hyder

Parents were alerted to the situation about 5 p.m. Monday via an email from Richmond-Burton High School Principal Mike Baird. In that email, Baird said the situation involves “sensitive images that appear to have been created and circulated on a computer.”

She saw her own image Tuesday afternoon, Hyder said. She and other students went to the library during their lunch period, and another classmate there said she had been forwarded the images and asked Hyder if she wanted to see what had been created of her.

What she saw was a photo taken at last year’s prom, but altered. Posted by a friend to Instagram, the original photo is of Hyder and another girl standing in front of the school in their prom dresses. In the AI-generated photo, the dresses had been stripped away.

“These look scary believable,” Hyder said she thought after seeing the picture.

It is her understanding that the student or students believed to have generated the fake photos using AI software had been forwarding the images to classmates via their school email account, possibly for several months.

Hyder said she was nauseated by the photos and left school for the day with her mother’s permission.

“The following day, a lot of girls did not go to school,” she said.

Essex said she was told, when called by a Richmond police investigator Tuesday evening, that she was the 22nd parent the investigator had called that day.

Hyder believes the total is close to 30 girls and women whose photos were used to make nude images – including two female staff members at the school.

What those affected people don’t know is how many copies of the altered photo exist and where they may have been uploaded, if at all.

In an email to parents Thursday, Baird said the situation was “a significant discussion” at the school board meeting Wednesday. He also let parents know that a therapy dog would be brought to school Thursday and Friday for the affected girls and said the district was “working to bring in additional crisis workers to assist any student who prefers to talk to someone from the ‘outside’.”

That email also referred students and families to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the organization’s Take it Down program.

“Students can fill out a report with images they want removed from the web, and this organization will work to assist with this endeavor,” Baird said in the email.

On Thursday, Hyder said she also received an email about a potential weekly support group for the affected students.

That may not be helpful for everyone, Hyder said.

“A lot of the girls don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “They don’t want to be talked about.”

She will keep talking about it, Hyder said, “because the more we put our foot down, the more the cops will be forced to do something about this.”

Other friends also would like to speak out, but their parents do not want them to, Hyder said.

She credits three boys in the school with alerting administrators to the photos.

“There has been no backlash” against her for speaking to the media, Hyder said. “An immense amount of people have been thanking me for speaking up.”

What doesn’t seem fair to her is that the girls who had nude images created of them from innocuous photos may find they are online for the rest of their lives.

By contrast, if they are minors, the perpetrator or perpetrators’ identities and images likely will remain protected.

“I don’t think it is fair at all that we got violated and exploited, and he got to hide,” Hyder said.

On Friday morning, in another district email, parents were directed to the Smart Social platform.

“By signing up for this platform, you will receive timely notifications and insights into your child’s online activities,” according to the email.

The email also suggests that parents become familiar with their child’s electronic devices, monitor their social media settings and encourage offline activities for their children.

“I am a little annoyed,” Essex said Friday after receiving the latest email. “The approach is now to be safer on social media versus teaching people how not to be [jerks]. Why are we teaching our girls to protect themselves harder versus teaching our boys to be better? These girls didn’t do anything wrong.”