Scott Shellenberger, the Baltimore County state’s attorney, said the case appears to be one of the first of its kind nationwide that his office was able to find. He said Maryland’s Legislature may need to update state laws to catch up with the nefarious possibilities of the new technology.

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For example, the charge of disrupting school activities “only carries a six-month sentence,” Shellenberger said.

“But we also need to take a broader look at how this technology can be used and abused to harm other people,” the prosecutor said.

Baltimore County detectives had asked experts to analyse the recording, according to the charges against Darien.

A professor from the University of Colorado-Denver told police that the audio file “contained traces of AI-generated content with human editing after the fact, which added background noises for realism,” court records stated.

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A second opinion from a professor at the University of California-Berkley told police that “multiple recordings were spliced together using unknown software,” according to the records.

A Baltimore County detective found that Darien had used Large Language Models, such as OpenAI and Bingchat, which can “create or produce results that tell users what steps to take to create synthetic media,” court documents stated.

Darien was arrested on Wednesday evening as he was attempting to board a flight at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough said. Darien was stopped because of how he had packaged his firearm for the flight, leading officers to learn he had a warrant for his arrest, according to McCullough.

McCullough said authorities had entered the warrant for Darien’s arrest into the system on Wednesday night and planned to serve it Thursday morning. The chief said he didn’t know why Darien was catching a flight to Houston and did not suggest that he was trying to escape.

“He could have been simply going there for other purposes,” the chief said.

AP

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