Teachers across Scottish schools are becoming increasingly distressed as students circulate sexual and violent AI-generated images of them on social media.

The incidents were first reported from Renfrewshire in the west central Lowlands of Scotland, but more cases have since been discovered nationally.

Some teachers have even taken time off work after explicit content depicting them appeared online, the BBC reports.

In a number of cases, clips simulating teachers’ appearance were inserted into pornographic footage. Additionally, fake social media accounts have been created in teachers’ names.

Paul Cochrane, the teaching union's vice president, told BBC Scotland that local authorities and police have been involved.

According to Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association, who spoke to Radio Scotland Breakfast, the images were first supposed to be something to laugh at, but later became something much worse.

Searson also shared that in Renfrewshire, a student created images of a teacher in a "very compromising situation and it has been circulated around the school", adding:

"All the children have seen these images and the teacher was left totally humiliated - it was intolerable for her to be in the school. This is now becoming a situation for all schools.

"It can start at a very low level, but then escalates into very nasty situations. There are no boundaries on this, so therefore children think they can do these sorts of things without any comeback.

"It is open season on teachers with these images."

A paper submitted this week to the Renfrewshire Joint Negotiating Committee for Teachers said the videos were “often humiliating, offensive, violent and (sometimes) sexual in nature”.

The issue is not reserved exclusively to students generating such content, but also to tech companies that allow it. On April 1st, UK regulator Ofcom reminded tech giants of their responsibility for ensuring that people in the UK, and especially children under the age of 18, don’t encounter harmful materials online.

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“Under the UK’s Online Safety Act, tech firms must assess and mitigate the risk of people in the UK encountering illegal content, and platforms likely to be accessed by children must also assess and mitigate the risk of under-18s being exposed to certain types of harmful material,” the regulator said.

Ofcom has issued formal information requests to 30 providers, requiring them to submit updated risk assessments by July 31st.

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