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A Louisiana family is outraged over the response to deepfake nude images of their 13-year-old daughter and other girls that allegedly circulated among male students at her middle school.

"It's disturbing. Those pictures are horrible. They're extremely explicit, and they look real. You cannot tell the difference," the father, Joseph Daniels, said.

Daniels' daughter was expelled from school in August after she confronted one of the boys allegedly sharing the images on a bus and hit him. Daniels says she felt she had no choice because the school hadn't acted on the reports of the images earlier that day. The family says it plans to file a federal lawsuit against the school district.

Lafourche Parish School District refutes the allegation that the school did not respond, saying Sixth Ward Middle School administrators and a school resource officer began an immediate investigation after the complaints.

"Consistent with established policy, several students were interviewed and parents were contacted during the course of the day regarding the allegations," a from the Lafourche Parish sheriff and superintendent said. "Despite everyone's best efforts, by the end of the school day, investigators had not been successful in locating any image or any evidence of the existence of the images."

The altercation on the bus happened after dismissal the day the images were reported, the statement said. 

While investigating that incident, "juvenile detectives and school resource officers discovered A.I. generated nude images of eight female middle school students and two adults," according to the sheriff and superintendent.

One male student was charged a few weeks after the incident for 10 counts of unlawful dissemination of images created by artificial intelligence, the sheriff's office said. Additional arrests or charges were possible, the office said.

The male student was never expelled or suspended, but instead transferred to a different school after the incident took place, according to the family's attorney. 

"In investigations involving school incidents, criminal charges can, but do not necessarily, play a factor in disciplinary actions," the district said.

The girl was allowed to return to school last week, but she remains on probation until at least January, preventing her from participating in school dances, sports or other extracurricular activities. 

Daniels said the expulsion has had a toll on his daughter. 

"She's tough, but, you know, mentally it does play on her. She dealt with depression, you know, anxiety," he said. "To me, her eighth grade year was pretty much ruined, which is her last year in middle school."

According to a recent study by , a nonprofit child advocacy group, 1 in 17 children nationwide have fallen victim to A.I. deepfake pornography. 

The family's attorney, Greg Miller, aims to bring attention to the easy access teenagers have to the technology to make deepfakes.

"There's no doubt that this is going to be a growing trend because we live in a world where 13-year-olds can get access to these kind of software, and in a heartbeat, do this to their peers, and the public needs to be made aware of this because it's growing and it's going to get worse and worse," he said.