The man accused of using artificial intelligence to create a fake, racist recording of a Pikesville High School principal was convicted of a misdemeanor Monday in Baltimore County, closing the first of several court actions against him.

Dazhon Darien, 32, of Baltimore, submitted an Alford plea to disturbing school operations and was sentenced to four months in the county’s detention center. The sentence, rendered by Baltimore County Circuit Judge Jan Marshall Alexander, is largely ceremonial, as the high school’s former athletic director remains in custody over allegations of child sexual abuse.

Darien is also being sued in federal court by Eric Eiswert, the principal who was removed from Pikesville after the false recording went viral last year. He has since become the principal of Sparrows Point Middle School.

Eiswert spoke briefly in court Monday about how his life and career were “forever changed” by Darien, who, in turn, described feeling professionally neglected and disrespected at Pikesville. Reflecting on the AI case, however, Darien said he should have handled his frustrations at work differently.

He told the judge he was sorry for the impact the recording had on the high school and its community.

“It was never my intention to hurt any of them,” Darien said.

Standing outside the county circuit court in Towson with prosecutor Brigid McCarthy, Baltimore County Deputy State’s Attorney John Cox said Darien’s case highlighted the need for a more “adequate” charge for crimes involving AI. Monday’s Alford plea, Cox said, showed Darien “was still not accepting full responsibility” for his actions.

“What he did is much more blameworthy than what he was held responsible for,” Cox said.

An Alford plea is not an admission of guilt but rather acknowledges the state would have enough evidence to convict if the case had gone to trial. It is treated the same as a guilty plea when it comes to sentencing.

Garnering national media attention at a time when AI capabilities were becoming more prevalent and user-friendly, the recording replicated Eiswert’s voice, making offensive statements about Black and Jewish students, saying the former couldn’t “test their way out of a paper bag,” as well as the capabilities of two staff members.

Prosecutors said Eiswert “was adamant” the words weren’t his, telling investigators at the onset he believed Darien was responsible. According to McCarthy, tensions with the athletic director were mounting in the weeks before the recording was released. The administration, she said, was not planning to renew his contract due to “poor performance” and his “unwillingness to follow the chain of command.”

The recording was first sent by email to three staff members, including Darien, and spread onto social media within the hour. Investigators were able to link that email to Darien’s grandmother’s home in California, though prosecutors said they couldn’t access his phone until December, approximately six months after charging him.

McCarthy said when they did, authorities found “multiple” visits to a web service capable of turning text into speech using a computer-generated or cloned voice. According to the state, Darien uploaded a private conversation he’d had with Eiswert into the online tool to generate a new recording — the mp3 file eventually sent to the Pikesville staff.

Once it was released, the fake recording caused an instant, “anger-fueled” reaction from the community, prosecutors said. Pikesville High was inundated with phone calls, causing fear among staff and students and an increased police presence at the school, as well as outside Eiswert’s home.

One threat made against Eiswert and recalled in court stated the “world would be a better place if you were on the other side of the dirt.”

In January, Eiswert sued several people in the county school system, including Darien and two other teachers who allegedly spread the recording, for defamation and violating his constitutional rights. He also sued the system’s chief of human resources and the Baltimore County Board of Education for negligence in hiring Darien, who his attorneys said used “a myriad of lies and exaggerations” to get the job.

“We are happy today to see that Mr. Darien has been held accountable by the criminal justice system,” Eiswert’s civil attorney Brian Cathell said Monday. “We’re also confident that the civil justice system will hold Mr. Darien, the school system and other individuals involved accountable not only to Mr. Eiswert, but also to the thousands of teachers, students and administrators who rely on BCPS to provide a safe learning environment.”

As of Monday, court records show a federal judge is considering motions by the school system and other defendants to dismiss Eiswert’s lawsuit.

But Darien faces liability in another federal case.

A year after the AI recording was produced, an FBI investigation into child pornography led to Darien’s arrest in January. According to an affidavit, Darien allegedly used social media to connect with teenagers and ask them to make lewd recordings of themselves, often for money. Charging documents allege that on at least one occasion, Darien met a teenage boy at a hotel for a hookup.

As of Monday, a hearing has not been scheduled in that case.

When announcing Darien’s arrest last year over the audio clip, Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said his was the first case the prosecutors’ office had addressed involving AI, and one of the first his office could find in the country.

Darien’s attorney, public defender Jasmine Hope, repeated that sentiment when asking Alexander to consider a more lenient sentence. Calling the case “a new type of situation,” she said her client could not have anticipated the consequences the recording would have.

“Artificial intelligence is such a new, emerging, scary thing,” Hope said. “I think this has been a lesson for everyone involved here.”

Hope declined to comment after Monday’s hearing.

Alexander, a Black man who has presided over Baltimore County cases for more than 20 years, said after hearing from the defendant that he was disappointed someone as well-spoken and thoughtful as Darien was capable of such a crime.

He said that Darien had not only harmed Eiswert with his actions, but everyone who experiences and speaks out against racism.

“It’s real. It happens. We live it,” Alexander said. “But we can’t just throw it out there when we feel like it.”

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