ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – It seems like artificial intelligence is involved in just about everything these days – including crimes.
What we know:
The St. Petersburg Police Department said one woman is facing charges after using ChatGPT to fake a crime.
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“The victim, now suspect, was stating that this subject, who she was unaware of, she doesn’t know him, had forced himself into her home,” Ashley Limardo, a public information specialist for SPPD, said.
Multiple officers responded to 32-year-olod Brooke Schinault’s home on Oct. 7. Police said she showed officers a picture she said she took of the suspect, but officers didn’t find any evidence of a crime.
They said she called again and told police she was also sexually battered by the person. Officers responded for a second time, and that’s when, Limardo said, they realized the man in her picture wasn’t real at all. He was AI-generated.
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“During that second call, we were able to contact one of our detectives upstairs to kind of get them to look over the evidence that we had and kind of give our officers at the scene some advice on how they should proceed with this case. As soon as that detective saw the images, immediately, she recognized it as a trend that we were seeing online,” she said.
Dig deeper:
“They’ll take a picture of their home, submit it into the chat, and then they’ll say, ‘can you put this person in it,’ and describe a male figure, and kind of give it some prompts on how they want this person to look, and then you can say, ‘can you have this person sitting on my couch,’” Limardo said describing the TikTok trend.
“They’ll then send that picture to a family member and say, ‘hey, this person knocked on my door,’ and then you get kind of a reaction from that person. ‘I don’t know who that is. Why did you allow them in,’ and I guess it’s meant to be funny, and I understand that people want to participate in trends. It’s funny in the moment, but it’s one thing when you’re participating in something, but then when you file it as a crime, knowing it’s false information,” she said.
Investigators later found the picture in a deleted folder of Schinault’s, and she created the image a few days before she called police, Limardo said. She is facing two counts of false reporting of a crime.
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“There are consequences,” Limardo said. “This is the first time we’ve ever had to deal with something like this, and again, the main issue here is that now, let’s say that we were also dealing with another urgent matter at the same time that this call came in. Essentially, that’s a waste of resources because we have people tied up working on this scene when they could be working on something that is actually real and urgent that would be more beneficial.”
What’s next:
Limardo said while this is SPPD’s first AI-related case, it’s likely not the last. Police can’t release the picture used in this case, because it’s still part of the investigation.
Schinault bonded out of jail and her next court date is Dec. 1. FOX 13 tried reaching out to her and hadn’t heard back at the time this was published.
The Source: This story was written with information provided by SPPD and court documents.
St. PetersburgArtificial IntelligenceCrime and Public Safety