Los Banos, California: a substitute teacher says a sexualised AI image of him made from an old selfie circulated among middle-school students on TikTok and Snapchat and was used by a student account impersonating him; one student received in-school suspension and he stopped taking assignments at the middle school

According to WIRED, on 12 March 2026 the teacher was working a shift at a coffee shop when a fellow barista said an AI photo was circulating on social media and a relative wanted to know whether it was him. Parts of the image resembled a mirror selfie he remembered taking at a college-era job, but instead of his work uniform he was wearing lingerie and posing suggestively. One TikTok account that shared it used the real name of a student he knew from the local middle school where he regularly filled in; he suspected two other students from the account's followers. He reported it to the assistant principal, who said the school would take care of it, and that evening found a different student had created an account impersonating him, using his name slightly misspelled and the image as its profile picture. Over the following weeks he went back and forth with administrators, the students' parents and the police, and wrote to the principal that if students were not afraid to generate and post such images of him, he was concerned about what they might circulate privately, including of other students. One student who admitted creating the image was disciplined with in-school suspension. He was later told the image had also been shared on Snapchat, says it continued to proliferate with other students posting it, and says he received several crude, sexual comments on his TikTok account. He told administrators he did not want middle-school assignments until the matter was fully addressed; the district did not respond to WIRED. He took an assignment at the local high school, where during one class he received the same AI-generated image by AirDrop before it was quickly revoked, and could tell it was circulating in the class. The principal said the school was launching an immediate investigation and offered a meeting or the counsellor. He told WIRED he probably would not return to the district this year and did not feel safe doing so. WIRED notes that in most of the accounts it gathered the teachers did not report the content directly to the platforms; Snap pointed to its policies against AI-generated content used to humiliate or sexually harass, and TikTok did not comment. The Los Banos Enterprise (25 August 2026, staff writer) summarised the WIRED account and noted that WIRED did not name the schools or district. The AI tool is not named and no forensic assessment of the image is described.

A sexualised AI image made from his old selfie circulated among students on TikTok and Snapchat, a student account impersonated him with it, he received crude sexual comments, and he stopped taking assignments at the middle school and says he does not feel safe returning to the district (the teacher's account to WIRED).

One student who admitted creating the image was given an in-school suspension; the teacher reported the image to the assistant principal and over the following weeks dealt with administrators, the students' parents and the police (WIRED). After the image reappeared at the high school, the principal told him the school was launching an immediate investigation and offered a meeting or the school counsellor. The teacher said he would not take assignments at the middle school until the matter was fully addressed and that he probably would not return to the district in the current school year. The district did not respond to WIRED. No platform enforcement or legal action is reported.