How a Racist, Antisemitic A.I. Deepfake Recording Rocked My Community

Last year, I moved to a suburb of Baltimore in Pikesville, Maryland. Pikesville is a diverse suburb in the Northwest Baltimore area known for having a very robust Jewish community. It is not uncommon to see whole Orthodox Jewish families on a playground or on the sidewalks. Every other block has a major synagogue, and beyond Pikesville being considered the Jewish epicenter of the Baltimore area, it is also 14.5% Black, 6% Asian, and 3.2% Hispanic. I go on runs and see, mostly, Jewish people, but people of every race and culture, and I do many of my runs at or near Pikesville High School, the local high school in the community.

I live near the border of Baltimore County, the suburb, and the city, and still work in Baltimore City, so it’s not like my whole life has been consumed by this crisis. But Baltimore and its surrounding suburbs are small, interconnected places, so a January 17th recording of a principal making very racist and antisemitic comments rocked the community.

In the recording, the principal, Eric Eiswert, who is White, allegedly said he does not understand why he has to put up with “these dumbasses every day” and that he is frustrated with “these ungrateful Black kids who can’t test their way out of a paper bag.” He seems to say two teachers should have never been hired. He also seems to berates the athletic director in the school, who is Black, and says he will “drag his Black ass out of here one way or another.” He seems to say “I’m going to get something to stick,” suggesting he would frame the athletic director to get him fired unfairly. The recording ends with Eiswert seeming to say “if I have to get one more complaint from one more Jew in the community, I’m going to join other side!”

Somehow, in one less than one minute recording, the principal seemed to disparage every major racial and religious stakeholder in the local community in a way that completely blew up his career. The principal, according to the Baltimore Banner, was immediately put on investigation and no longer worked at the school after the recording was released.

When I first heard it, the recording seemed very real and I had no doubt the principal actually said it— listen for yourself. This recording made shockwaves across social media, particularly on an Instagram page known as murder_ink_bmore. I scrolled through the comments multiple times and saw that a lot of people did not like this principal and thought he was an asshole. Some commenters had bad experiences with this principal when he was at a previous school, and expressed zero surprise he would make these very racist comments. Another person implicated in the recording, the assistant principal, also bore the brunt of comments from students and former students saying they did not like her. The superintendent immediately released a statement condemning the offensive statements about Black students, the staff, and the Jewish community of Pikesville.

This news was rapidly spread, but news outlets just referred to it as a “recording” or “audio” rather than something that Eiswert definitively said. Billy Burke, the director of the union that represents Baltimore County administrators, said the voice in the recording was not real and that Burke believed it was A.I.-generated. The superintendent confirmed that the school system could not “confirm the veracity of this recording,” but was investigating it.

“He did not say that,” Burke said.

It was a defense, at first, that no one believed.

A reporter for one news outlet, WJZ, went to Eiswert’s house to try to interview him. The person said that Eiswert was not home, and went on to say, “he wants to know what side you’re on, I guess.”

The person at the door then said, “nobody is going to believe his story anyway, so it doesn’t really matter,” perhaps indicating that Eiswert understood the utter implausibility of the defense that the audio was A.I.-generated.

First, my friends and I commented about the audio and asked questions — who was he talking to? What did he mean by “I’m going to join the other side?” Why was he so angry in the recording?

I eventually urged caution in rushing to judgment. We discussed the policy implications of people just being able to say, when caught saying something offensive in a recording, that it’s just an A.I. deepfake. If that were a universally valid defense, no one would be held accountable for anything. If it was a deepfake or wasn’t a deepfake, the societal implications were scary either way.

I thought this particular audio had a particular sophistication — his voice sounded very real — it sounded like other recordings of this principal I had looked up. His comments aligned to what a White boss with a bad reputation among some Black students, would say, even if the directness and viciousness of these particular comments seemed particularly overboard and surprising.

I then shared the story and the recording with another person, who went to the high school but has since graduated. I also mentioned that the principal’s union in Baltimore County claimed it was a deepfake. This person said he was conflicted on whether it was a deepfake. He pointed out that when listening to the audio, you could hear many audio splices, that showed the audio had been edited.

I listened to it again myself and heard what he heard. The audio was spliced with one to two second pauses between every offensive utterance, which did indicate it was edited. Still, I reasoned that this could have been a much longer conversation where the principal was recorded saying very offensive things in an hour span, but edited into a “greatest hits of offensive comments” recording.

Still, I had enough doubt about whether or not this was an A.I. deepfake that I brought up this defense when talking about it. With some friends, I got major pushback for saying I was now conflicted too. The pushback was that I was very naive to not think a White guy could be such an asshole to say these offensive things. How could I not believe this guy didn’t say these comments? Why was I defending this racist White guy?

I definitely got the hint not to bring up, publicly, that I suspected there may be some merit to this A.I.generated audio defense, as most people just assumed this principal said it and assumed he was guilty of being a racist antisemite, with the exception of the principal union’s director, whose job it was to defend him. It seemed to have zero benefit in my defending this publicly vilified and shamed figure who was suddenly seen as the biggest racist in town, even if I privately thought we should pause in the rush to judgment. If this was my best friend, I may have thought differently, but I didn’t know this principal or work at this school.

This stayed in the news for a couple of days, but new developments kept coming up that seemed to complicate matters. The Baltimore Banner asked some students and staff members who have worked with Eiswert what their opinion was. One student interviewed said she had concerns about the principal’s views of minorities even before the recording. The chair of Baltimore County’s Northwest Area Education Advisory Council said she wasn’t shocked at the comments and that the school district has been overlooking and sweeping problems under the rug.

Burke, who later spoke during a county school board meeting, maintained Eiswert’s innocence and said it was “discouraging that people have assumed guilt before the investigation is complete. It has proven to be dangerous and is unfair.” Burke also said that there needed to be a police presence at Eiswert’s home due to Eiswert and his family being threatened and harassed. Burke made these statements via phone during public comment based on allegedly receiving harassing emails himself.

One teacher who used to work with Eiswert at another school, Catonsville High School, said she did not believe the audio was Eiswert, who defended his track record of good relationships with students. Another teacher at the school also defended Eiswert, and referenced his support of a diversity program starting at the school.

Other students called him a mean administrator and accused Eiswert of differential treatment between White and Black students as an assistant principal. Some people urged not to rush to judgment, while others said Eiswert had not done enough to address academic gaps between Black and White students and did not do enough to hold accountable teachers who treated Black students with bias.

Given this mixed feedback and history, it seemed entirely plausible that the principal said it. It also seemed plausible that he didn’t, given the pauses and that he said every possible offensive thing in such a short amount of time. I continued to follow news developments closely as the investigation continued, just because I did not know what to believe at this point.

Fast forward three months later, and, spoiler, my instinct towards caution was right this whole time.

Yesterday, Justin Fenton and Kristen Griffith at the Baltimore Banner reported that the athletic director of the school had been arrested and charged with allegedly using artificial intelligence to impersonate the principal. The athletic director was apprehended at the local airport, where he was stopped for having a gun on him and airport officials found a warrant for his arrest. The athletic director was charged with disrupting school activities, as investigators made a finding that he faked the principal’s voice and circulated it on social media, according to the State’s Attorney’s Office.

The athletic director was mentioned in the racist recording — he was the Black person the principal allegedly was going to drag out of the school “one way or another” and whom he was “going to get something to stick” for. Law enforcement accused the athletic director of making the recording after the principal initiated an investigation into alleged improper payments the athletic director made to a coach.

The latter investigation has resulted in a felony charge of “theft: $1,500 to under $25,000.” He is also being charged with disturbing school operations, retaliating against a witness, and stalking, according to court records. Interestingly enough, the charge for the theft, which to me seems like the least egregious of these alleged offenses, is the only felony charge while the rest, including stalking and witness retaliation, are misdemeanors. The athletic director and another teacher involved in distributing the audio resigned effective June 30.

In charging documents, police wrote that the athletic director had used the school wifi to search for OpenAI tools and used “Large Language Models” that can use “deep learning, which involves pulling in vast amounts of data from various sources on the internet, can recognize text inputted by the user, and produce conversational results.”

Today, the Baltimore Banner interviewed students on how they felt about the athletic director. One student said it felt like justice, as the athletic director made a lot of students, including that student herself, uncomfortable. Students accused the athletic director of making ableist comments, being power-hungry, not caring about his students, and making inappropriate and disrespectful comments. Two athletes said they collected money to pay for the team to pay for uniforms, T-shirts, and food, but the students never received uniforms, shirts, or food. All three students complained to the administration about the athletic director. Another student said he didn’t deliver on promises and dropped the ball with uniforms, transportation, and other logistics.

Interestingly, all students interviewed still said that even though the athletic director was charged, they still believed Eiswert was capable of making the same remarks based on an alleged history of not supporting some Black students and Black student groups.

A few weeks ago, the Baltimore Banner consulted numerous A.I. experts on the authenticity of this audio clip. Two experts said the audio has hallmarks of a fake audio clip. The director of a media forensics lab said the audio was not very sophisticated, and that someone had just used an AI voice generator, which doesn’t actually take a lot of effort. Voice generator tools are available to anyone and usually advertise that they can instantly create audio that sounds very much like human speech.

The media forensics director said this particular audio was edited and the voice of the principal was very flat. The media forensics team put the audio through several deepfake audio detection methods, and in four cases, the audio was deemed A.I.-generated with 99% certainty and in one other instance, deemed A.I. generated with only 74% certainty. Other A.I. experts said the audio was almost certainly A.I. generated, and indicated the stops as signs of file manipulation. However, the experts acknowledged the techniques did not allow them to be 100% certain about whether A.I. was involved, as the detection tools are not as sophisticated as DNA technology or fingerprinting yet.

The athletic director has not been convicted and found guilty either, and a bedrock of our democracy is supposed to be the presumption of innocence. This has certainly changed in the social media age where any urge to pause a rush to judgment makes you complicit, or guilty by association with an alleged wrongdoer, like I was implied to be, but my personal opinion is we should pause in our rush to judgment against both the principal and the athletic director. in this instance.

I scanned Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) to see what people in the community were saying, and was disappointed that some thought the charges were some elaborate conspiracy to cover for a White in a position of authority, and others joked asking what app or program the athletic director used to make the recording, implying they would like to use it themselves. There was also some predictably conservative pushback on Twitter on how the woke left dropped the ball on falling for an episode of fake racism. Many on Instagram said the athletic director was pulling a “Jussie Smollett,” which I had to look up. It was a a reference to the actor who falsely claimed he was attacked by two White supremacist Trump supporters in a racially motivated hate crime.

To me, this is a very, very scary symptom of A.I.’s rise and disruption to our society now that there is such a high-profile local case of it being used for this purpose. That is part of why I’ve been so interested in this story and following the tale of the allegedly racist and antisemitic principal and the A.I. defense so closely. Of course, this makes me feel a little bad about myself — these are two real people’s lives that are now publicly shamed and ruined, even if they objectively did do something wrong. And the school itself has been rocked by the immense media attention — this is not just a cautionary tale or juicy story, but a nightmare the school community has been living through.

I thought about the optics from the school perspective — I listened to a joint press conference from the Baltimore County Chief of Police, County Executive, and School Superintendent where there was no talk about the principal’s future or the threats to him and his family, which were the result of this deepfake audio. It seems like the principal would have a very strong civil case and be able to win a lot of money.

Clearly, the hope is that all parties could turn the page from this episode and the implication seems to be that they cannot have the principal in a public-facing position in the school district again, despite his name being cleared. I don’t agree, but I understand the politics, especially if some people still think he’s a racist, A.I. or not. There’s might sizeable minority of people who don’t believe the A.I. deepfake explanation and think this is some massive conspiracy to defend a White man in a position of authority. There might be others who think that the guy is still a racist even if this was a deepfake setup.

Somehow, this deepfake A.I. audio has become a proxy for race relations in the community and real and legitimate grievances about racial disparities and disparate treatment of Black students in the Baltimore County school system. Again, I have no personal stake in this as someone who works in a different school system, in the city instead of the suburbs. But it is clear that there are many people who are so entrenched in their positions that this principal is a racist, antisemitic, and emblematic of deeper systematic disparities in the school system that there is an unspoken belief in the school community that Eiswert being principal again would be untenable— it would be too messy and uncomfortable.

I suppose it is difficult to judge how anyone feels or reacts to this whole saga given its unprecedented nature. However, from a policy perspective, I think it’s a very scary that you can still be treated like you’re guilty of saying something you didn’t if people feel like you could have said it. I get where the students were coming from based on the principal’s history and reputation, but to me, you either said something or you didn’t. As an outsider, it is somewhat jarring no one seems to talk about or care about what this principal and his family went through or that his life was unfairly ruined.

I think a lot of things can be true at once — this principal may have not had the best relationships with some students and had blind spots in his disparate treatment of students of color, and he can be the victim of a highly malicious and unfair audio deepfake hoax. I think it is a very dangerous point in our discourse if we can’t differentiate truth from hoax and draw that line. Most of us in such a diverse area care deeply about diversity and equity and may be more liberally minded — but it’s hard to see how conservatives don’t call out the hypocrisy of this huge rush to judgment and this unwillingness to recognize the impact on the man’s life and family. It is a very slippery slope — in not calling out a hoax, fake episode of inflammatory racism and antisemitism, a lot of more moderate and conservative observers will take actual incidents of racism and antisemitism a lot less seriously.

Of course, it’s clear the athletic director and the principal had a horrible relationship for such an audio recording to surface. And it’s clear that if a local athletic director in a local high school can (allegedly) so easily make a fake audio that sounds so real and convincing, anyone can. The only thing stopping your average Joe, like me or you, from making a fake audio recording of someone we dislike saying super incriminating comments is our shared ethics and community norms. But what if people disregard those ethics and shared norms, or someone dislikes another person so much that they do it anyway?

The joint statement suggested legislation to give greater sanctions and penalties for those who make fake audio recordings to ruin other people’s lives and defame them, since such legislation is very underdeveloped at the moment. That would probably be a good idea, as the athletic director does not face much in terms of criminal sanctions, if found guilty, as the charge of “disrupting school activities” has only a six-month sentence.

And it took three months to finally clear this principal — what happens if someone made a more sophisticated audio that was harder to catch? What if the athletic director did a better job covering his tracks and didn’t stupidly Google how to make an audio A.I. deepfake on his work wifi?

I did not take the threat of A.I. seriously until now, now that it has hit so close to home and I have seen the impact on A.I. on distorting reality and dividing people.

This is one of the first and most high-profile incidents of an audio deepfake not simply being used to plagiarize musical artists and make music, but being used, like visual deepfakes, for ruining people’s lives. This Kafkaesque episode foreshadows a future of many more episodes where people weaponize artificial intelligence for malicious purposes, especially now that they’re seeing what’s possible.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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