Henderson Student Charged for AI

HENDERSON, Ky. — A South Middle School student is facing charges after Henderson police say the student used artificial intelligence to create explicit images of classmates and showed them to other students.

Sgt. Bill Russell, an administrative sergeant with the Henderson Police Department, said investigators found the student had pictures of other juveniles and used AI to place their faces on different bodies.

“We had a student juvenile that had pictures of other juveniles, and they did AI generation and basically put it in there, put their face with a different body and generated it and showed it to other kids,” Russell said.

He said the images also may have been passed along.

South Middle School serves students in grades 6 through 8.

Police received the report last week. Officers said AI-generated nude images of children were being created and shown to other students. Russell said the accused student and the victims are juveniles, which limits what the department can release.

The juvenile was charged and taken Monday to the juvenile detention center in McCracken County, Russell said. A hearing was held on Tuesday.

Police have said the charges include distribution of sexually explicit images without consent, possession or viewing of matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor, and distribution of matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor.

Henderson County Schools declined an on-camera interview. In a statement, the district said it is aware of a situation involving a South Middle School student “allegedly using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate inappropriate images.”

The statement said Henderson police are investigating, school administrators have been in communication with the families involved and are cooperating with law enforcement, and the district will not release additional information because it is an active case. Anyone with information was asked to contact police.

In an email, district spokeswoman Megan Mortis said the district sends families a notice each fall about sexual extortion under a 2025 state law, Senate Bill 73. She also said AI “is certainly new territory, and we are continuing to learn and navigate it just as many school districts are.”

Russell said cases like this have been rare for his department.

“Luckily, around here, we haven’t had a whole lot of issues with AI at this time that came to our attention,” he said.

He said police work closely with the school system and that every Henderson school has a school resource officer students can talk to if they do not feel comfortable going to a parent or teacher. He asked parents and others who see something to call police.

“We will investigate it to the fullest,” Russell said.

Child-protection employees say the Henderson case fits a broader pattern.

Stacy Garrett, vice president of content and community engagement at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said the nonprofit has been watching how generative AI is used to exploit children, including in reports to NCMEC’s CyberTipline.

“We first started tracking specifically reports that were associated with AI in about 2023. And that first year we saw a few thousand,” Garrett said. “But even just looking very specifically at reports that had to do with AI generated child sexual abuse material in the past year. So this was in 2025. We had more than 180,000 reports related to that.”

She said the threat is growing and should be taken seriously.

Garrett said some reports involve adults. Others involve children creating AI images of classmates and circulating them.

“We’re also seeing instances where children are creating AI imagery of their peers and circulating it. It’s becoming something that plays a role in bullying or cyberbullying,” she said.

She said the harm does not shrink because the body in the image is generated.

“We see little to no difference between children who are victimized by child sexual abuse material that was created by AI, versus content that did not involve AI, because there is still that feeling of when that circulated, when that’s seen by others, feelings of shame, embarrassment, the emotional harm that can cause,” Garrett said.

Other people who see the image often cannot tell whether it is real, she said.

Kentucky law already reaches this kind of material. In 2024, the General Assembly amended Chapter 531 of state law so that possessing or distributing matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor includes a computer-generated image of a minor. The statutes define a computer-generated image as a visual depiction created, adapted or modified by a computer to appear to be an identifiable person. Prosecutors are not required to prove that the minor in a computer-generated image actually exists.

Garrett said adults — parents, schools and police — need a plan before the next case lands. She said children who come forward should be believed and pointed to help, including NCMEC’s CyberTipline and Take It Down, a free service that creates a digital fingerprint of a nude or sexually explicit image or video made before age 18 so participating platforms can try to stop it from spreading.

She also said prevention has to start before someone treats it as a joke.

“I think sometimes it’s easier for them to think about it from the perspective of what if this happened to your friend?” Garrett said. “And even if your intent was a joke, how do you think that they would feel if somebody did that to them? Those can be lasting, that can create lasting harm for somebody.”

NCMEC has published tip sheets on generative AI for parents and for school staff. Police asked anyone with information to call the Henderson Police Department at 270-831-1295.