The mothers, who are not being identified to protect their children, said the images used their daughters' real faces superimposed onto AI-generated nude bodies. The original photo was a happy moment from the end of softball season.

"They nudified it," one mother said. "They took a very happy, innocent picture of our girls in a very realistic sense, put a nude, fully nude image onto our daughters' bodies to be seamless with their very real and very minor faces."

One mother recalled the moment her daughter told her what had happened. "I go in her room and she's crying," she said. "She said, 'There is a naked picture of me and my friends passed around school.'"

The other mother described the anguish of asking her daughter whether she had posed nude. "I feel tremendous guilt having to ask that question to her, because she was horrified," she said. "She was like, 'No, I would never do that.'"

The mothers said two classmates created the image using an app or website and then distributed it at school. According to the Union County Sheriff's Office, the two boys have been charged with second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor. The charges were filed by the school resource officer, and the sheriff's office said there have been no additional reports or incidents related to the matter.

The Union County District Attorney's Office is prosecuting the case in juvenile court, according to the mothers. A court hearing is scheduled for late November.

The mothers said a school resource officer told them one of the boys deleted the image from his phone, but they argue that does not undo the harm. "This is not a notepad that he created it on. This is the internet, the vast wide web that the image was out in," they said. "Simply deleting it off his phone after it had been distributed certainly does not give us any peace of mind."

The fallout has extended beyond the images themselves. The mothers said their daughters have lost friends and been excluded from social events. "These girls have been uninvited to things, because parents have seen the invite list, seen our girls' names on them, and uninvited them," one mother said. "What that does to a 13- and 14-year-old girl whose whole world right now is their friends? I mean, it's demoralizing."

The girls still attend school with the boys, who the mothers said can sit near them as long as they do not make contact. "It's very uncomfortable for the girls," one mother said. "It also sets precedence that it's OK. It's not a big deal to the rest of the students that saw the picture, and everybody that knows about it."

The mothers also said some families have rallied behind the boys' families. "There have been families that have contacted both of us separately, different families, who have been advocating for the boys' families to essentially say, in sum, boys will be boys," they said.

Union County Public Schools declined to discuss student matters but said violations of the student code of conduct are "immediately addressed by school-level staff." The district said students who believe an incident may violate Title IX regulations can file a formal complaint, which would require the district to pause disciplinary action pending a Title IX investigation under federal rules. It was not immediately known whether a complaint was filed in this case.

The district's published code of conduct allows a three-to-five-day suspension for middle or high school students found in possession of pornographic, profane or violent material. The district also cited Policy 4-23, which addresses student criminal behavior but limits district action to cases where a student has been convicted or charged with a violent crime as defined by statute.

The case reflects a broader and fast-growing problem. Reid Davis, special agent in charge of the FBI's Charlotte field office, said AI-generated child sexual abuse material is as harmful as real imagery and that the tools to create it are widely available, often free and accessible on a phone.

"There are mechanisms for perpetrators to actually take the photograph of a clothed individual and de-clothe them to what they potentially could look like in the nude, and use those in the same ways either for their own gratification for exchanging in dark web networks, or for sextortion," Davis said.

Davis pointed to a prior case in Charlotte in which a man — an adult child psychiatrist — was sentenced to prison for possessing AI-generated child sexual abuse images. According to Davis, the man took innocent childhood photographs of former classmates and used AI to create nude images of them as children.

The FBI does not investigate cases involving juvenile suspects; those fall to local police, sheriffs' offices and district attorneys. Davis urged parents to use parental controls and privacy settings and to limit who can view their children's photos online.

"It's a genie that's out of the bottle," the Union County mothers said. They warned that without accountability from schools, the state and the country, other families will face the same ordeal.

"It's so easy to do," one mother said. "It's going to be wildfire. It already is starting."

The other added: "Any parent, period, should know that this is this easy with AI. This is destructive to the person who creates it, in a sense, that they are going to and should be held accountable for what they do. It's a crime, and then the victims are forever changed."

The mothers said they are speaking out so that no other family has to endure what theirs have. "We don't want another parent or child to be in the same shoes we're in," they said. "If we stay quiet, what are we doing?"