Ex-athletic director framed principal with AI-generated voice, police say

Kristen Griffin and Justin Fenton

The Baltimore Banner

April 25, 2024

Baltimore County Police arrested Pikesville High School’s former athletic director Thursday morning and charged him with using artificial intelligence to impersonate Principal Eric Eiswert, leading the public to believe Eiswert made racist and antisemitic comments behind closed doors.

Dazhon Darien, 31, was charged with disrupting school activities, after investigators determined Darien faked Eiswert’s voice and circulated the audio on social media in January, according to the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office. Darien’s nickname, DJ, was among the names mentioned in the audio clips he allegedly faked.

“The audio clip … had profound repercussions,” police wrote in charging documents. “It not only led to Eiswert’s temporary removal from the school but also triggered a wave of hate-filled messages on social media and numerous calls to the school. The recording also caused significant disruptions for the PHS staff and students.”

He is also charged with theft and retaliating against a witness, related to alleged illicit payments he made to a school athletics coach, as well as stalking, prosecutors said.

Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough, County Executive Johnny Olszewski, and School Superintendent Myriam Rogers announced a 1:30 pm press conference to discuss the case.

Eiswert’s voice, which police and AI experts believe was simulated, made disparaging comments toward Black students and the surrounding Jewish community, was widely circulated on social media.

Questions about the audio’s authenticity quickly followed. Police wrote in charging documents that Darien had accessed the school’s network on multiple occasions in December and January searching for OpenAI tools, and used “Large Language Models” that practice “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.” They also connected Darien to an email account that had distributed the recording.

Many current and former students believed Eiswert was responsible for the offensive remarks, while former colleagues denounced the audio and defended Eiswert’s character. Eiswert himself has denied making those comments and said the comments do not align with his views.

The audio, posted to the popular Instagram account murder_ink_bmore, prompted a Baltimore County Public Schools and Baltimore County Police investigation. Eiswert has not been working in the school since the investigation began.

The voice refers to “ungrateful Black kids who can’t test their way out of a paper bag” and questions how hard it is to get those students to meet grade-level expectations. The speaker uses names of people who appear to be staff members and says they should not have been hired, and that he should get rid of another person “one way or another.”

“And if I have to get one more complaint from one more Jew in this community, I’m going to join the other side,” the voice said.

Darien was being investigated as of December in a theft investigation that had been initiated by Eiswert. Police say Darien had authorized a $1,916 payment to the school’s junior varsity basketball coach, who was also his roommate, under the pretense that he was an assistant girls soccer coach. He was not, school officials said. Eiswert determined that Darien had submitted the payment to the school payroll system, bypassing proper procedures. Darien had been notified of the investigation, police said.

Police say the clip was received by three teachers the night before it went viral. The first was Darien; a third said she received the email and then got a call from Darien and teacher Shaena Ravenell telling her to check her email. Ravenell told police that she had forwarded the email to a student’s cell phone, “who she knew would rapidly spread the message around various social media outlets and throughout the school,” and also sent it to the media and the NAACP, police said.

She did not mention receiving it from Darien until confronted about his involvement. Ravenell has not been charged with a crime and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Rogers, the superintendent, in January called the comments “disturbing” and “highly offensive and inappropriate statements about African American students, Pikesville High School staff, and Pikesville’s Jewish community.”

Billy Burke, head of the Council of Administrative & Supervisory Employee, the union that represents Eiswert, was the only official to suggest the audio was AI-generated.

Burke said he was disappointed in the public’s assumption of Eiswert’s guilt. At a January school board meeting, he said the principal needed police presence at his home because he and his family have been harassed and threatened. Burke had also received harassing emails, he said at the time.

Police said the school’s front desk staff was “inundated with phone calls from parents and students expressing concern and disparaging remarks toward school staff and administrators.” The flood of calls made it difficult to field phone calls from parents trying to make arrangements for their children and other school functions, officials told police.

“The school leadership expressed that staff did not feel safe, which required an increase in police presence at the school to address safety concerns and fears,” police said.

Teachers, under the impression the recording was authentic, “expressed fears that recording devices could have been planted in various places in the school,” police said.

“The recording’s release deeply affected the trust between teachers and the administration,” police said. “One individual shared that they fielded sensitive phone calls in their vehicle in the parking lot instead of speaking in school.”

Experts in detecting audio and video fakes told The Banner in March that there was overwhelming evidence the voice is AI-generated. They noted its flat tone, unusually clean background sounds and lack of consistent breathing sounds or pauses as hallmarks of AI. They also ran the audio through several different AI-detection techniques, which consistently concluded it was a fake, though they could not be 100% sure.

AI voice-generation tools are now widely available online, and a single minute’s recording of someone’s voice can be enough to simulate it with a $5-a-month AI tool, the Nieman Journalism Lab reported in February.

There are few regulations to prevent AI imitations, called deepfakes, and few perpetrators are prosecuted.