FRESNO, Calif. (KMJ/KFSN) — A feud on full display continues between Superintendent Misty Her and the Fresno Unified Teachers Association.
After over a year of public back and forth, the superintendent claims social media posts and emails sent by the Union have escalated to personal targeting.
So, as a response, she asked her Chief of Communications, Nikki Henry, to create a document outlining the alleged attacks.
Now that document is now at the center of controversy for its use of artificial intelligence.
Superintendent Misty Her speaks with ABC30
“It was my attempt to put everything on paper so I can go back and reflect and look at what happened along the way,” says Superintendent Her.
The document contained a list of news articles and social posts with quotes from union leaders she claims target her. The problem is that the quotes were fabricated or embellished by AI.
“I want to be completely honest with the public about what’s happening. My comms person did use AI to help generate the document. I didn’t check the document,” says Her. She goes on to say, “But I will say that the gist of it was there, the articles were, there the postings were there.”
Her gave an example of a Facebook post made by the union that depicts a trivia game asking followers to guess her salary. She says posts like that one have incited hostility.
“I didn’t think that was funny, and the reason why I didn’t think that was funny was because that post caused things to happen to me in public where people were coming up to me, physically putting hands on me and referencing the post,” says Superintendent Her.
Union President Manuel Bonilla says the post was meant to be lighthearted and says it’s unfair to characterize any of their posts as personal attacks.
“To make that jump into suggest that somehow we were connected or incited any type of identity-based attack is irresponsible in my opinion, especially when it is based on fabricated information,” says Bonilla.
Bonilla is now demanding further action be taken in response to the document.
“We absolutely are calling for the termination of the chief information officer, and we want to make sure that anybody else who didn’t do their due diligence to check this has some type of disciplinary review,” says Bonilla.
Superintendent Her said she would spend her first 100 days in her new role working to improve the district’s relationship with teachers, and has already hosted about 10 listening sessions. But Bonilla says this AI-generated letter is a step in the wrong direction.
