Residents of a Spanish town are in shock and distress after several AI-generated naked images of local girls have been circulating online. According to a BBC report, AI-generated naked images of young girls in Almendralejo, some as young as 11 and up to 17 years old, have been circulating on social media platforms without their knowledge or consent.

Notably, the pictures were mostly taken from the girls’ social media accounts, and then processed by an AI app that created a fake image of the person without clothes. Almost 20-30 girls aged 11 to 17 have come forward as victims.

María Blanco Rayo, the mother of a 14-year-old, told the BBC, “One day my daughter came out of school and she said ‘Mum there are photos circulating of me topless’. I asked her if she had taken any photos of herself nude, and she said, ‘No, Mum, these are fake photos of girls that are being created a lot right now and there are other girls in my class that this has happened to as well.”

Dr Miriam Al Adib, mother of one of the victims said in an Instagram video that the morphed pictures look realistic and quite unsettling for everyone, especially her 14-year-old daughter.

”If I didn’t know my daughter’s body, this photo looks real. You (the culprits) are not aware of the damage you are causing. Using images to create this disgusting material and distributing them is a very serious crime,” she said. 

“Girls, don’t be afraid to report such acts. Tell your mothers. Affected mothers, tell me so that you can be in the group that we created,” she added.

The local law enforcement is now dealing with 11 complaints from victims, all of whom are minors. The parents of the affected children have also set up a support group to help them through the ordeal. 

As per BBC, at least 11 local boys have been identified as having involvement in either the creation of the images or their circulation via the WhatsApp and Telegram apps. They are also looking into a claim that an attempt was made to extort one of the girls by using a fake image of her.

Speaking to AFP, a spokesperson from the local police said that the people responsible for these ”manipulated photos of underage girls”, superimposed their innocent faces onto the “bodies of other people” in other images. 

As per EuroNews, these deep fake nude images were created using an AI application called ClothOff.