A University of Pittsburgh student said her school, along with others in the area, was put on lockdown after police received an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated hoax call that falsely reported that several students at a nearby Catholic high school got shot.
Sami (@saamimori) questioned why such a seemingly coordinated effort would be used in order to mobilize and concentrate police forces in these areas and terrorize students. She said that these cases aren’t receiving mainstream media attention.
“I haven’t seen anybody talking about this,” Sami said in a March 30 video that’s received over 415,000 views. “[The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University] both got put on lockdown due to an active shooter threat at high schools nearby. Except they weren’t threats, there was a call from inside of the Catholic High School that there was six people shot.”
@saamimori major universities & high schools had swatting incidents & no one is talking about this! please let me know if you heard about this situation in pittsburgh & other areas :/ #pittsburgh #school #swatting #swatted #schoolshutdown #lockdown ##westernpa##pitt##universityofpittsburgh##cmu##carnegiemellon ♬ original sound – SAMI
Carnegie Mellon University reported it has about 14,500 students, while the University of Pittsburgh reported it has about 30,000 students.
Sami then described a chaotic scene while in class. “There was sirens and lights flashing in our classrooms telling us to stay where we were. So we are all freaking out on Twitter trying to find out what’s happening, and all anybody is saying is that six people were shot inside of the boys’ school. Turns out that six other high schools in Western Pennsylvania also got calls saying that there was an active shooter in the building,” she said.
Sami said authorities later discovered the phone calls “were fake; they were all a hoax.” “They believe it was AI-generated calls,” she said.
Sami expressed shock that the calls didn’t receive ample news coverage considering she said they happened two days after a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. That shooting occurred on March 27 and left three children and three adults dead. “Obviously everybody’s fine. It wasn’t real, but what was the plan behind this? Like, why call some of the biggest districts in the city of Pittsburgh and evacuate them? Like what was the point? They drew a huge police presence to one area of Pittsburgh,” Sami said.
She said that some of the students who go to these schools, including herself, are now on edge.
“It makes me, like, kind of scared on like what was the purpose behind this? What was, what was the plan? We know like if you’ve heard about this and you’re not from Pittsburgh or like Western PA because I literally haven’t heard anybody talking about it,” she said.
CBS News Pittsburgh reported on March 29 that police across the Pittsburgh area responded to “computer-generated swatting calls” made to various schools in the area. The outlet added that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, State Police, and Pittsburgh city police are looking into the origin of the calls.
NPR and the Associated Press also reported on the incident, which appears to have affected several institutions across the United States.
A spokesperson for the FBI told the Daily Dot via statement that “the FBI is aware of the threats being made to several schools.”
“The FBI takes swatting very seriously. These threats put innocent people at risk and cause significant fear in the community. We have no information to indicate a specific and credible threat at this time, but we continue to collaborate with our law enforcement partners and are actively investigating these dangerous and criminal threats. Multiple agencies are working to gather and share information and respond to these threats with a shared goal of keeping the public safe. We urge the public to remain vigilant and report any and all suspicious activity and/or individuals to law enforcement immediately,” the spokesperson said.
The Daily Dot has reached out to the Pittsburgh Police Department and Sami via email for further comment.
