Teacher arrested, accused of using AI to falsely paint boss as racist and antisemitic

Teacher arrested, accused of using AI to falsely paint boss as racist and antisemitic

A Maryland high school teacher was arrested after he allegedly used artificial intelligence to create phony audio, planting racist and antisemitic words into the voice of his boss, officials said Thursday.

Dazhon Darien, a physical education teacher and athletic director at Pikesville High School, was accused of falsifying the voice of principal Eric Eiswert in January, authorities said.

He’s been charged with disrupting school activities. An arrest warrant for Darien was signed by a judge Wednesday afternoon and a Baltimore County state’s attorney spokesperson on Thursday confirmed the educator’s arrest.

Eiswert was widely admonished when the viral audio seemed to capture him spewing hateful rhetoric, mocking Black and Jewish people.

Darien and Eiswert had been at odds over “work performance challenges” with the suspect’s contract possibly “not being renewed next semester,” according to the arrest warrant.

The voice initially believed to have been Eiswert’s said Black students were unable to “test their way out of a paper bag,” according to the court document.

“The recording went on to make disparaging comments about Jewish individuals and two teachers … who ‘should have never been hired’ at the school,” the warrant said.

Eiswert has always insisted that recording, which had been sent to Darien and two other teachers the night of Jan. 16, was fake.

The audio spread quickly on social media and “had profound repercussions,” causing “significant disruptions for the PHS staff and students,” according to the arrest warrant.

Eiswert has been on paid administrative leave since the recording went viral.

Investigators linked the email [email protected], used to send that audio, to an internet service provider registered to Darien’s grandmother, according to the warrant.

The recovery phone number for that Google account was a 213 area code, registered to Darien, a Southern California native, police said.

A forensic analyst, contracted by the FBI, also found that the recording “contained traces of AI-generated content with human editing after the fact,” the arrest warrant said.

Darien was shown to have used the Baltimore County Public Schools’ network to access OpenAI tools and Microsoft Bing Chat services on Dec. 18 and 19 and Jan. 15, a day before the audio clip was sent out, police said.

Darien and family members of the suspect could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com