For Luis DeSantiago, a substitute teacher in Los Banos, California, it started with a few text messages. On March 12, as he was working his other part-time job at a coffee shop, his phone lit up. A fellow barista said there was an AI photo circulating on social media. Her cousin wanted to know if it was DeSantiago.

At first, DeSantiago wasn’t worried—he figured that inappropriate photos violated TikTok’s community guidelines and were usually quickly removed.

“When I finally saw the image, that’s when it felt like a punch to the gut,” DeSantiago tells WIRED. Parts of it resembled a mirror selfie that he remembered taking at a job in college. But instead of his work uniform, he was wearing lingerie. And instead of standing normally, as he had been in the original photo, he was posing suggestively.

The texts kicked off a monthslong saga that crossed two schools and involved students and administrators. And DeSantiago is far from the only educator who’s been victimized this way.

WIRED spoke with three other teachers who allege that their students made sexualized photos and videos of them, likely using AI. They say the incidents have been profoundly distressing and disappointing—and in some cases, it’s led them to reassess how they view their work and their relationships with their students.

After he received the texts, DeSantiago began to piece together who might have been behind the image. One account that shared it used their real name in their TikTok profile—it was a student DeSantiago knew from the local middle school, where he regularly filled in.

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