A Maryland high school teacher was arrested after he allegedly used artificial intelligence to create phony audio, planting racist and antisemitic words into the voice of his boss, officials said Thursday.
Dazhon Darien, a physical education teacher and athletic director at Pikesville High School, was accused of falsifying the voice of principal Eric Eiswert in January, authorities said.
"We now have conclusive evidence that the recording was not authentic," Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough told reporters in Towson. "It’s been determined the recording was generated through the use of artificial intelligence technology."
Darien was charged with disrupting school activities and other counts.
"As you could imagine this has been a very difficult time for (the) Pikesville High School community, principal Eiswert and his family," Baltimore County Public Schools Superintendent Myriam Rogers said.
A judge on Wednesday afternoon signed an arrest warrant for Darien before he was caught Thursday morning at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
Darien was scheduled to fly to Houston when security questioned if he had properly packed his gun for travel, McCullough said.
Darien's name was run through police records and the warrant showed up, leading to the suspect's arrest, he added.
The police chief stopped short of saying whether Darien was seeking to flee.
Darien was also charged with theft, retaliation against a witness and stalking.
He and Eiswert had been at odds over “work performance challenges” with the suspect’s contract possibly “not being renewed next semester,” according to the arrest warrant.
"Through their investigation, detectives allege that Mr. Darien, who was athletic director at the high school, made the recording to retaliate against the principal, who had launched an investigation into the potential mishandling of school funds," McCullough said.
Eiswert had been following up on a $1,916 payment Darien allegedly authorized for an assistant girl's soccer coach when the head coach and players said that person never assisted the team, police said.
Eiswert had also reprimanded Darien for terminating a coach without the principal's approval, police said.
Eiswert was widely admonished when the viral audio seemed to capture him spewing hateful rhetoric, mocking Black and Jewish people.
The voice initially believed to have been Eiswert's said Black students were unable to "test their way out of a paper bag," according to the court document.
"The recording went on to make disparaging comments about Jewish individuals and two teachers ... who 'should have never been hired' at the school," the warrant said.
Eiswert has always insisted that recording, which had been sent to Darien and two other teachers the night of Jan. 16, was fake.
The audio spread quickly on social media and "had profound repercussions," causing "significant disruptions for the PHS staff and students," according to the arrest warrant.
Eiswert has been on paid administrative leave since the recording went viral.
The school has been run by district appointees since Eiswert's departure and those temporary administrators will stay on the job through the end of this school year, Rogers said.
"We will work with principal Eiswert and the Pikesville community concerning next year," Rogers added.
Investigators linked the email TJFOUST9@gmail.com, used to send that audio, to an internet service provider registered to Darien's grandmother, according to the warrant.
The recovery phone number for that Google account was a 213 area code, registered to Darien, a Southern California native, police said.
A forensic analyst, contracted by the FBI, also found that the recording "contained traces of AI-generated content with human editing after the fact," the arrest warrant said.
Darien was shown to have used the Baltimore County Public Schools' network to access OpenAI tools and Microsoft Bing Chat services on Dec. 18 and 19 and Jan. 15, a day before the audio clip was sent out, police said.
Darien and family members of the suspect could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.
The school district will seek to fire Darien, the superintendent said.
