A Maryland high school teacher has been arrested on suspicion of using artificial intelligence to create a fake voice and injecting racist and anti-Semitic language into the voice of his supervisor, authorities announced Thursday.
Dazon Darien, a physical education teacher and athletic director at Pikesville High School, was charged in January with falsifying the audio of Principal Eric Eiswart, authorities said.
“We have conclusive evidence that the recording is not authentic,” Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough told reporters in Towson. “This recording was found to have been generated using artificial intelligence technology.”
Darien was charged with interfering with school activities.
“As you can imagine, this is an extremely difficult time for the Pikesville High School community, Principal Eiswart and his family,” said Baltimore County Public Schools Superintendent Miriam Rogers.
A judge signed a warrant for Darien's arrest Wednesday afternoon, and he was arrested Thursday morning at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
McCullough said Darien was scheduled to fly to Houston, but security asked him if he had properly packed his gun for the trip.
Darien's name was checked in police records and a warrant appeared, leading to the suspect's arrest, he added.
The police chief did not say whether Darien was trying to flee.
Darien was also charged with theft, retaliation against a witness and stalking.
According to the arrest warrant, he and Eiswart were at odds over “job performance issues,” and his contract “may not be renewed next semester.”
“The investigation alleges that Darien, who was the high school's athletic director, made the recordings in order to retaliate against the principal, who initiated an investigation into possible student fraud,” McCullough said in a statement.
Police said Eiswart tracked a $1,916 payment that Darien allegedly made to an assistant women's soccer coach, and the head coach and players said the person helped the team. He reportedly said that there was no such thing.
Police said Eiswart scolded Darien for firing the coach without the principal's approval.
Eiswart was widely reprimanded after viral audio footage showed him mocking blacks and Jews and spewing hateful rhetoric.
According to court documents, what was initially thought to be Eiswart's voice said the black student was unable to “try to remove it from the paper bag.”
“The recording continued with derogatory comments about Jewish individuals and two teachers who 'should never have been employed' at the school,” the warrant said.
Eiswart has always maintained that the recordings sent to Darien and two other teachers on the night of January 16 were fake.
The arrest warrant says the audio spread quickly on social media and caused “severe impact” and “significant disruption to PHS staff and students.”
Eiswart has been placed on paid administrative leave since the recording went viral.
Rogers said the school has been run by district appointees since Eiswart's departure, and the interim administrators will remain in their positions through the end of this school year.
“We will continue to work with Principal Eiswart and the Pikesville community regarding next year,” Rogers added.
Investigators linked the email used to send the audio, TJFOUST9@gmail.com, to Darien's grandmother's Internet service provider, according to the warrant.
Police said the Google account reset phone number had an area code of 213 and was registered to Darien, who is from Southern California.
The arrest warrant also states that a forensic analyst contracted by the FBI found that the recordings “contain traces of AI-generated and post-mortem human editing.”
Police said Darien used the Baltimore County Public Schools network to access OpenAI tools and the Microsoft Bing Chat service on Dec. 18 and 19, the days before the audio clips were sent, and on Jan. 15. It turned out that it did.
Darien and the suspect's family could not be reached for comment Thursday.
The district will seek Darien's termination, the superintendent said.