AI Risks for Students: 5 Risks WA High Schools Need to Address
AI education in schools cannot just be about cheating and academic integrity.
As AI becomes part of students’ everyday lives, schools are facing a much wider range of AI risks for students, from AI companions and deepfakes to manipulation, privacy concerns and emerging technologies such as smart glasses.
These aren't future scenarios.
They are already part of the online environment students are navigating.
For WA high schools, the question is no longer whether students will encounter these technologies. It is whether they have the knowledge and critical thinking skills to navigate them safely.
Here are five AI risks schools should be talking about right now.
1. AI companions and emotional dependence
Students are increasingly using AI chatbots and AI companions for conversation, advice, entertainment and emotional support.
Research from Common Sense Media found that 72% of teens surveyed had used AI companions at least once.
For some students, an AI companion can begin to feel surprisingly personal. It is available whenever they want to talk, responds immediately and can appear supportive and understanding.
That creates an important question for schools:
What happens when an AI becomes one of the most trusted sources of advice or support in a young person's life?
Students need to understand that an AI chatbot isn't a friend, counsellor or trusted adult, even when the conversation feels personal.
AI literacy therefore needs to include conversations about relationships, trust, privacy and knowing when to seek support from a real person.
This is one of the reasons AI education needs to move beyond teaching students how to write better prompts.
2. AI-generated influencers and manipulation
Students are surrounded by influencers and online content designed to shape what they watch, buy, believe and think about themselves.
AI is making it possible to create increasingly convincing synthetic content and virtual influencers at scale.
That raises another important AI risk for students: manipulation.
Students may not always realise who or what is behind the content they are consuming.
Is it a real person?
Was the content created or altered using AI?
Is someone being paid to promote something?
What is the purpose of the content?
And what is it trying to make you think, feel or do?
These are critical thinking questions, not simply technology questions.
Students need to understand that online content isn't automatically trustworthy just because it looks professional or comes from someone with a large following.
3. AI exploitation and fake intimate images
Another serious concern for schools is the misuse of AI to create fake intimate or sexualised images of people without their consent.
The technology has made it much easier to manipulate images, meaning a student's ordinary photo can potentially be misused without them ever having created or shared an intimate image themselves.
For schools, this is an online safety issue as much as an AI issue.
Students need to understand consent, privacy, image-based abuse and the consequences of creating or sharing harmful content involving another person.
They also need to know what to do if something like this happens to them or someone they know.
The message should be clear:
Technology doesn't remove responsibility.
AI literacy needs to include understanding the real-world consequences of how AI-generated and manipulated content is created and shared.
4. Deepfakes and disinformation
Students can no longer assume that a video, image or voice recording is genuine simply because they can see or hear it.
AI can be used to create convincing synthetic content, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between authentic and manipulated material.
For teenagers, the consequences can be very real.
Fake content can be used to spread rumours, damage someone's reputation, create conflict or humiliate another student.
And once something has been shared online, it can be extremely difficult to control where it goes next.
This is why AI literacy and critical thinking need to go hand in hand.
Students should be encouraged to pause before believing or sharing content and ask:
Who created this?
Where did it come from?
Can I verify it somewhere else?
Is there evidence to support it?
Could this have been manipulated?
What could happen if I share it and it isn't real?
The goal isn't to teach students that everything online is fake.
It's to teach them not to automatically assume that everything online is real.
5. Smart glasses and covert recording
AI-powered and camera-enabled glasses create another emerging issue for schools: privacy and consent.
They can look like ordinary glasses while also being capable of capturing images, video or other information.
That creates questions schools need to consider now, rather than waiting until the technology becomes commonplace.
Can students wear them on campus?
Can they record other students?
What about staff?
What happens to the footage after it is captured?
And do people know they are being recorded?
These questions aren't just about the technology itself. They're about consent, privacy and the expectations schools have around recording other people.
Schools should consider whether their existing policies adequately address wearable cameras and emerging technologies.
These aren't future AI risks
The five risks above affect very different parts of student life.
AI can influence:
who students trust
how they form relationships
what they believe
what content influences them
how easily someone else's image can be manipulated
whether they know they are being recorded
That's why AI education can't stop at academic integrity.
Students still need to know how to use AI tools responsibly for learning. But they also need the skills to navigate what AI is doing around them.
They need to question what they see.
They need to understand how technology can influence them.
They need to think about privacy and consent.
They need to recognise manipulation.
And they need to know what to do when AI is used in harmful ways.
What should AI literacy look like in high schools?
For schools, this doesn't necessarily mean adding another subject to an already packed curriculum.
AI literacy can be connected to existing conversations around digital citizenship, online safety, critical thinking, media literacy and wellbeing.
The important thing is that students get repeated opportunities to explore these issues.
One presentation isn't going to prepare students for every new technology they encounter.
AI is changing too quickly for a one-off lesson to be enough.
Students need ongoing conversations that help them understand not just how to use AI, but how to think about AI.
That includes asking better questions, checking information, understanding privacy, recognising manipulation and knowing when technology should not be trusted.
AI literacy needs to go beyond cheating
Academic integrity is an important part of the AI conversation in schools.
But it is only one part.
If students leave school knowing how to avoid using AI to cheat but don't know how to question an AI-generated video, recognise manipulation, protect their privacy or respond when technology is used against them, we haven't fully prepared them for the world they are entering.
The risks are changing.
Our approach to AI education needs to change with them.
For WA high schools, that means treating AI literacy as part of broader online safety, critical thinking and digital wellbeing education, not simply as a response to academic misconduct.
Helping WA students navigate emerging AI risks
Paris McNeil works with schools across Perth and Western Australia to help students understand AI, digital wellbeing and emerging online risks.
Her workshops give students practical tools to question what they see, understand how technology can influence them and make safer, more informed decisions online.
