Ecuadoran prosecutors launched an investigation on Thursday into the distribution of videos generated by artificial intelligence that showed sexual content using images of students.

The probe was opened following "the dissemination of images and videos of students of an educational institution in Quito, modified using AI," the prosecutor's office said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The alleged perpetrators manipulated teenagers' pictures by superimposing their faces onto other people's naked bodies.

Sybel Martinez of the anti-bullying program Grupo Rescate Escolar said that there were "approximately 700 videos of sexual and erotic content" involving images of between 20 and 24 students.

Distributing child and adolescent pornography is punishable by up to 16 years in jail in Ecuador.

The investigation follows an incident in Spain where AI-generated nudes of underage girls were distributed.

The advent of AI has caused growing concern around the world that the technology can be used for malicious purposes such as the creation of so-called "deepfakes" — computer-generated, often realistic images and video, based on a real template.

About 96 percent of deepfake videos online are non-consensual pornography, and most of them depict women, according to a 2019 study by the Dutch AI company Sensity.