{"id":35783,"date":"2025-11-06T13:03:41","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T13:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/35783\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T13:03:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T13:03:41","slug":"st-pete-police-say-woman-faked-crime-using-ai-generated-image-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/35783\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Pete police say woman faked crime using AI-generated image"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Brief<\/p>\n

St. Petersburg Police said the woman showed them a picture she said she took of the suspect.<\/p>\n

Investigators recognized the picture from a TikTok trend and said it was created on ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

They later found the picture in a deleted folder, and said the suspect created the image a few days before she called police.<\/p>\n

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – It seems like artificial intelligence<\/a> is involved in just about everything these days \u2013 including crimes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What we know<\/p>\n

The St. Petersburg<\/a> Police Department said one woman is facing charges after using ChatGPT to fake a crime.<\/p>\n

READ:AI-generated image of Obama DJing in Arizona goes viral<\/a><\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

Multiple officers responded to 32-year-olod Brooke Schinault\u2019s home on Oct. 7. Police said she showed officers a picture she said she took of the suspect, but officers didn\u2019t find any evidence of a crime.<\/p>\n

They said she called again and told police she was also sexually battered by the person. Officers responded for a second time, and that\u2019s when, Limardo said, they realized the man in her picture wasn\u2019t real at all. He was AI-generated.<\/p>\n

MORE: Parents testify before Congress about the danger of artificial intelligence<\/a><\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dig deeper<\/p>\n

“They’ll take a picture of their home, submit it into the chat, and then they’ll say, \u2018can you put this person in it,\u2019 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, \u2018can you have this person sitting on my couch,\u2019” Limardo said describing the TikTok trend.<\/p>\n

“They’ll then send that picture to a family member and say, \u2018hey, this person knocked on my door,\u2019 and then you get kind of a reaction from that person. \u2018I don’t know who that is. Why did you allow them in,\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

Investigators later found the picture in a deleted folder of Schinault\u2019s, 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.<\/p>\n

READ: Sisters accused of stealing nearly $2.5K in goods from Target: PCSO<\/a><\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

What’s next<\/p>\n

Limardo said while this is SPPD\u2019s first AI-related case, it\u2019s likely not the last. Police can\u2019t release the picture used in this case, because it\u2019s still part of the investigation.<\/p>\n

Schinault bonded out of jail and her next court date is Dec. 1. \u00a0FOX 13 tried reaching out to her and hadn\u2019t heard back at the time this was published.<\/p>\n

The Source<\/p>\n

This story was written with information provided by SPPD and court documents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief St. Petersburg Police said the woman showed them a picture she said she took of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[4038,24833,265,24835,24834,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-35783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-ashley-limardo","tag-crime","tag-public-information-specialist","tag-sppd","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}