Billions of people worldwide use the internet and social media on a daily basis. Through these digital platforms, individuals are exposed to an excess of information, via articles, videos, and images.
While scrolling your social media feed, you come across a photo of a carnival, tucked into a harbor, with a beautiful sunset in the background.
But something seems a bit off about the image. Some of the rides look strange. They’re too bright, too colorful. The swings are all different shapes, and some of the rides don’t even lead anywhere. Is it a bad photo? A glitch?
In reality, it’s been edited by AI. Half of the photo’s details aren’t real, rather, generated by AI to fill the empty space. You probably didn’t notice the boat sitting in the harbor, which was also added by AI.
The simultaneous growth and improvement of AI is causing internet users to question the validity of the media they are exposed to.
The use of generative AI has expanded access to deepfake technology, which allows users to create or heavily alter images. These images can appear as real as any other photograph, which only increases their damaging potential.
There has been an especially concerning increase in explicit deepfake images, specifically explicit content of minors. This increase is a result of unregulated AI programs that lack the necessary protections to prevent abuse of the technology.
Many high schools around the country have reported instances of explicit content generated by AI, targeting students and using their likeness without consent.
The threat of deepfake images alone is causing real psychological damage to kids worldwide who are aware of the growing nature of this technology.
“[A deepfake image] impacts mental health because it’s a violation of someone’s bodily autonomy. It’s taking something, an image of someone, and altering it without their consent,” a South Windsor High School psychologist told The Prowl.
Every US state, including Connecticut, has enacted laws that criminalize non-consensual sharing of explicit images online. However, when these photos are being created with AI, the lines become a bit blurry.
Existing laws are unable to properly address the regulation of AI images, and lawmakers are now working to catch up to the technology. Just last month, the U.S. Senate passed a bill giving victims of deepfake images the right and legal grounds to sue over the misuse of their likeness, however the House of Representatives hasn’t taken up the bill yet.
This current legal gap is doing damage to victims of AI deepfakes, whose likenesses have been used without permission, causing distress among those affected.
A recent report from Global Child Protection Agencies revealed the international scale of this issue, and according to UNICEF, “In a UNICEF, ECPAT and INTERPOL study across 11 countries, at least 1.2 million children disclosed having had their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes in the past year. In some countries, this represents 1 in 25 children – the equivalent of one child in a typical classroom.”
These numbers are significant and indicate that this issue isn’t going away. The UNICEF report goes on to say that while the images generated by deepfakes are not real, the impact and damage they cause certainly is.
Many countries like South Korea, China, India and the EU have passed laws holding generative AI companies accountable for allowing users to create explicit deepfakes. The United Kingdom has even threatened to ban X (formerly Twitter) and Grok AI, Elon Musk’s app and AI model, because it has created explicit images, including ones involving children.
Aside from the danger of deepfakes in generating explicit images, manufactured images also contribute to the spread of false information, especially among individuals who are less able to discern real images from generated ones.
As the presence of manufactured content is on the rise, people have become increasingly more likely to fall victim to fake pictures and videos created about news events, often referred to as misinformation.
Misinformation has been a growing concern as social media continues to distort people’s understanding of real world events, but with the addition of deepfake images and videos to online news circuits and social media platforms, this danger increases exponentially.
According to the Pew Research Center around 53% of U.S. adults get the majority of their news from social media. In 2025, 53% of FaceBook users say they regularly get their news from within the platform. A 2025 study said that over 40% of Facebook’s long form posts are generated by AI. Considering AI is getting harder and harder to detect, it may be harder for certain populations on FaceBook to decipher what is real and what is not.
News events in the past month have been subject to change from AI altered videos and pictures.
President Donald Trump shared an AI generated photo through the social media platform Truth Social, depicting Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, blindfolded and handcuffed aboard a Navy ship.
Things like this, considering 50% of citizens get their news from social media, can change the discourse around national and international news events and spread more misinformation.
“AI negatively affects my trust in the media because it allows for untruthful content to be shared,” SWHS junior Sarah Lambert told The Prowl. “I think there should be some restriction to stop misinformation from spreading.”
The creation and sharing of deepfake images only heightens emotions and leads to more charged reactions from viewers unable to differentiate between real and false content. These images serve to confuse and provoke people, and cause irrevocable damage to effective sharing of information. Deepfakes also sow distrust among viewers who, after seeing countless AI images online, may start to question the validity of anything they see in the future.
There are suggestions for parents concerned about navigating new technology.
“I would recommend parents seek to build a safe, non-judgmental, and trusting relationship with their children, and they take a collaborative problem solving approach to this…I’ll imagine parents saying ‘I’m interested in the kinds of things you enjoy on your phone. Would you be willing to show me or talk to me about it?'” SWHS Psychologist suggested.
Not only is it important for parents to monitor the type of content their children are consuming and creating, but it is equally important for adults to check themselves and make sure they are getting trustworthy and accurate information.
