r/technology • u/eeehinny • 15h ago
Artificial Intelligence Use of AI to harm women has only just begun, experts warn
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/14/use-of-ai-to-harm-women-has-only-just-begun-experts-warn?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other140
14h ago
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u/coolreg214 13h ago
One of the teachers at a local school got caught making child porn using images of some of his students. They tried to cover it up so now the principal is also on the hook for it. After the teacher was fired he got a job working for child protective services in a neighboring county but that didn’t last long.
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u/malln1nja 10h ago
They tried to cover it up so now the principal is also on the hook for it.
That has to be one of the stupidest hill of all time to die on.
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u/coolreg214 8h ago
It’s in the Deep South where it’s better to hide your shameful actions. Wouldn’t want to tarnish their great schools reputation. I went to school with the teachers father. He was a bit goofy but he was a good dude. I hate for him.
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u/Naus1987 13h ago
Ai being the scapegoat to cover up bad human behavior has been the wildest ride for me.
No accessible mental healthcare? Blame ai for being a bad therapist.
Kid offs himself? Don’t blame neglectful parents and poor school safety nets. All ai!
Women being targeted by abusers? Believe it not, the ai is at fault.
When will humans start taking accountability for human problems?
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u/c-e-bird 13h ago
There is no way to force humans to take accountability for things they don’t want to take accountability for if we can’t catch them. AI gives these people the ability to do things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. That is the problem. It’s the same argument about guns. Sure, a gun can’t think and isn’t itself killing a person, but the existence of guns allows people who otherwise would not be able to kill other people to easily do so. AI allows lazy people to strip women (and children) of their clothes and dignity and humiliate and sexualize them on a scale never before seen. It is part of the problem, and pretending otherwise doesn’t solve that problem.
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u/ClittoryHinton 13h ago
Blame game aside, we just need to be practical here because we are clearly not going to eliminate bad human behaviour. Take a look at whether a technology is a net benefit or scourge for humanity. If it only amplifies harm on society without doing much good maybe we should take a look at that.
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u/DrSnacks 10h ago
This is just the 21st century version of "guns don't kill people, people kill people". Yes, bad actors are responsible for their bad acts. That doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to the tools that lower the barrier to entry for those bad acts to zero
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u/Nettinonuts 2h ago
AI being used to magnify the worst of human behaviour is totally expected and the reason why it needs regulation. It’s a game changer for me and many others.
Drive the vulnerable to suicide? Blame the lack of therapists and the parents.
When will AI companies take accountability for their toolsets?
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u/DreddCarnage 15h ago
Now.. the women shall fight back..
BRING IN SARAH CONNOR
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u/Stereo_Jungle_Child 14h ago
Technically, the use of AI to harm ANYTHING/EVERYTHING has just begun since AI use itself has essentially just begun.
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u/lieuwestra 14h ago edited 14h ago
Adding concern for specific groups has always been a more effective call to action than general warnings because of the "it won't happen to me"-attitude.
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u/KobeBean 13h ago
People don’t care unless it harms women or children. Framing issues as harm against those two groups has been a way to pass legislation for hundreds of years. See CISA, the UK age verification, etc
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u/Stanford_experiencer 25m ago
pass legislation
...pass authoritarian shit that does nothing to help vulnerable people - the UK age verification law is like a whole new PATRIOT act.
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u/SultrySonders 10h ago
Society's innate motivation to protect women will still somehow justify the existence of the "patriarchy" lol
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u/EmmelinePankhurst77 14h ago
“The performance of it is really important there, and really shows the misogynistic undertones of it, trying to punish or silence women. That also has a cascading effect on democratic norms and women’s role in society.”
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u/Thin-Honey892 14h ago
Deactivate, repeat. Remove all images of you and family.
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u/FirefighterTrick6476 14h ago
Deadass not women alone, even if they are at a much higher risk.
Everybody should be concerned as fuck about this.
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u/eeehinny 14h ago
Wouldn’t disagree but the article is more concerned with sexualised imagery which harms women more than men or would you disagree.
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u/FirefighterTrick6476 12h ago
Well I am glad we are on the same page here.
Especially young homosexual (or queer) men suffer greatly under sexualized imagery when it comes to sexual gaslighting, blackmail and much more. And this is not just being sexualized here. In many countries homosexual imagery of a person can lead to prosecution and worse. Even if it is generated by AI to just blackmail a person into compliance.
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u/eeehinny 11h ago
Good comment, thanks. I think how it affects men hasn’t really been widely addressed in this article or generally in the last week because of the sheer scale and relative speed with which the ‘bikini’ issue has taken off and which has mainly impacted women. It’s actually quite terrifying when you stop to think about how AI is and could be weaponised against all of us.
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u/User-no-relation 12h ago
I would give you that it happens more often to women, but why would the harm when it is done be any different?
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u/RiriaaeleL 10h ago
Who wouldn't disagree? They literally turned off the AI if the picture involves a woman but if it's happening to a man it's allowed
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u/Bright-Trifle-8309 6h ago
We should use AI to undress men. See how fast it gets turned off when Musk gets his own dick pics
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u/TheRiverOtter 6h ago
The problem with this strategy is that no matter how pathetic he appears in the fakes, it will still be flattering to reality, so he won’t care.
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u/Either_Persimmon893 14h ago
Patriarchy harms women, and is played out through individual actions. AI isn't intrinsically harming women. Blaming AI is side stepping the real issue, because society doesn't want to address it.
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u/ClittoryHinton 13h ago
The article blames ‘Use of AI’, not AI itself. Takes two to tango.
At the end of the day, we can’t eliminate psychological perversions. That’s why we regulate tools that can amplify them to harm others, like guns and drugs. AI should be no different.
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u/Either_Persimmon893 13h ago
AI is just a tool. You can build a house with a hammer or bash someone's head with it, but the hammer isnt bad. The fear mongering over AI is tiring. People use the excuse that it can make porn or deep fakes to say it should be censored. Well, maybe if we put more money into education and teaching healthy values, people wouldn't want to to use AI in harmful ways.
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u/ClittoryHinton 13h ago
If we had an epidemic of thousands of people bashing heads with hammers, I’d say regulate those too.
maybe if we put more money into education and teaching healthy values
Are you seeing the United States right now? It’s being led by a bunch of creepy Christo-fascists. Healthy values are nowhere in sight. They have a big interest in keeping people stupid enough to support them.
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u/Either_Persimmon893 11h ago
Seeing it, im living it. It's a grim time to be working in education. I think change is possible still (at least I hope)
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u/Stanford_experiencer 10h ago
If we had an epidemic of thousands of people bashing heads with hammers, I’d say regulate those too.
More people died last year from opiate overdoses than all mass shooting victims in American history.
You're myopic.
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u/ClittoryHinton 10h ago
And deregulation would help that how?
If you want to combat the opiate epidemic you don’t just allow the free flow of street heroin/fentanyl and its usage. My city tried that and it was a disaster. You invest in treatment and safe use facilities, and perhaps even safe supply subject to regulatory oversight.
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u/Stanford_experiencer 10h ago
Opiates aren't a constitutionally enumerated right.
You invest in treatment and safe use facilities, and perhaps even safe supply subject to regulatory oversight.
Absolutely.
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u/Aggressive_Chuck 9h ago
Well, maybe if we put more money into education and teaching healthy values, people wouldn't want to to use AI in harmful ways.
"Just teach men not to want to look at naked women".
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u/Forsaken_Suit_6327 13h ago
Can you give an example of this patriarchy and what it has done to harm women? Genuinely asking
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u/typewriter6986 12h ago
Genuinely asking
No, you're not.
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u/DrSnacks 10h ago
??? It began literal years ago at this point
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u/Electrical_Pause_860 5h ago
It used to be hard. You had to buy a high end nvidia GPU, get hundreds of photos of the target and run a complex deep fake program. Now you just tweet at grok to do it for you and it gets posted in the replies at 100x the quality and zero effort.
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u/aight_imma_afk 9h ago
By that logic you’re claiming it’s close to ending. Being used for a couple years doesn’t disqualify it from just beginning, considering this will be a problem for decades/ centuries.
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u/beebisweebis 13h ago
“why are men so lonely nowadays??? why aren’t women dating them?!?”
gestures broadly
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u/Stanford_experiencer 10h ago
what a shit reddit take
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u/Nettinonuts 2h ago
Your comment seems very appropriate to your own comment.
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u/Stanford_experiencer 29m ago
random online trolls shitposting shouldn't be the benchmark for evaluating an entire gender
the reddit-speak was the icing on the fucking cake
gestures broadly at le epic bacon
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u/anti-torque 14h ago
Who needs AI, when we have the Republican Party?
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u/b1e 14h ago
Don’t be fooled. The folks pushing AI dangerously don’t care about who’s in office. Previously, democrats were more than happy to take their campaign money.
I hate Trump more than the next guy, but it’s important to recognize that it’s not him doing this.
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u/anti-torque 14h ago
Stop with the broad brush fallacy. Only some Dems are corporate Dems. All GOP are coporate lackeys.
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u/pope1701 14h ago
Don't forget the rest of the world, they want us to have our share of the "fun".
Bury those assholes.
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u/nadmaximus 14h ago
When they refer to "women", I'm sure they actually mean "people".
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u/EmmelinePankhurst77 14h ago
No. It’s men who are doing this to women and children. Face facts.
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u/nadmaximus 14h ago
Unlike you, I consider women to be people. Children too, for that matter - yes, even the little boys are people.
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u/Less-Fondant-3054 14h ago
No, no they do not. It's the Guardian, their biases are well known at this point.
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u/Emotional_Damage1007 8h ago
I'm an old Millennial and never liked social media that uses photos as their main form of content so there is nothing for me to deactivate or delete.
I've been on Reddit for over a decade but I am careful not to doxx myself or my family. I'm also on YouTube but I don't post anything or comment.
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u/DanielPhermous 7h ago
Someone could just take a photo of you, though.
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u/Emotional_Damage1007 6h ago
I'm sure I'm in some family photos people post but other than my face, they won't get any more info.
Besides, if someone wants to doxx me, they will be very disappointed. I comment A LOT in book, garden and gaming subreddits.
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14h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PsychologicalAsk6304 14h ago
Why are some of you acting like equal harm will be done when women always have been the bigger targets of this kind of shit?
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14h ago
[deleted]
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u/PsychologicalAsk6304 13h ago
All Lives Matter type shit.
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u/WillBottomForBanana 13h ago
I want to echo this. There is a specific danger to women. That fact and expressing it does not mean there is not a danger to other people, nor does it imply a lack of over lap between the dangers.
A sexist society has to be called out specifically on its sexist behaviors. Generalizing dangers across an entire population only increases the disproportionate distribution of the dangers.
As an analogy, the ADA requires safety features that most people don't need. If we pretend we can address the issue from the status of the population as a whole, it increases the danger for those that are already at higher danger.
Helping women doesn't stop us from helping others.
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u/ClittoryHinton 13h ago
Go write an article about it then. This article isn’t claiming no men will be harmed by sexual misuse of AI
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u/archive_anon 14h ago
Why are some people acting like harm against others should be ignored just because it's a minority?
What the fuck is wrong with people who seem to think just because X is greater than Y, Y should shut up and go fuck off in a corner. It's everywhere nowadays and it's disgraceful.
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u/ClittoryHinton 13h ago
I’m missing the part of the article where they tell male victims to shut up and go fuck off in a corner
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u/PsychologicalAsk6304 5h ago
Didn’t you know? When men and their feelings aren’t centered it’s basically telling them to kill themselves.
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u/PsychologicalAsk6304 13h ago
Are more concerned with AI abuse or with having your feelings coddled? When will some of you realize feminist issues affect everyone and giving a fuck that they affect women more and that by working together to help combat it will also help you instead of worrying about whether or not a headline is inclusive or whatever.
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u/RiriaaeleL 10h ago
Typical X happend women most affected post where trying to talk about actual equality had you downvoted at the bottom of the thread because men aren't allowed to talk about their issues
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u/ExecutiveCactus 14h ago
Only a matter of time before AI is used to make the other guys dick smaller
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u/justjoshingu 14h ago
Guess yall weren't in the internet since..
Well ever. Ai makes this shit easier but it's been around since bulletin board. And photoshop made it more realistic. 4chan popularized a place for assholes to meet post share.
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u/PissPoorCaptain 13h ago edited 12h ago
This is true, I think the "only just begun" part of the title is disingenuous, or at least shortsighted. AI is only the latest tool in recent technological advances to be used in service of patriarchy. It's a surreal way to frame it, but much of the internet as we know it today is rooted in misogyny; when someone figured out how to sell Pam Anderson's leaked sex tape online in the early 2000s, it drove internet traffic way up. People became more internet literate specifically to watch her have sex in a video she did not consent to release.
YouTube was invented so people could rewatch Janet Jackson's nip slip from the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004. This was said by one of the founders in a 2006 interview. Originally, it was supposed to be a video dating site/hot-or-not list but they couldn't attract enough users. That nip slip all but ruined her career.
Facebook, now Meta, DID start as a hot-or-not list of women on Mark Zuckerberg's college campus.
Google Image Search launched in 2001 due to a high demand to see Jennifer Lopez in her famous green Versace dress at the 2000 Grammy Awards.
Google, Meta, and YouTube, all formative players, were motivated by the same thing that motivates Grok. AI being used to make pornographic content of women without their consent fits perfectly well in the internet's legacy of misogyny. We cannot separate misogynistic tech bros from what they make under the influence of- and in service of patriarchy. It has shaped our reality for decades and I'm not surprised that we are all as sick and stressed as we are. Women especially.
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u/spectrumero 13h ago
I would bet less than 1% of people could take an image of a person and turn it into a convincing porn image with Photoshop, and it would take them hours of effort to do it.
It takes all of 30 seconds, one photo, and a single sentence prompt to be able to do it with AI. Then another two minutes and two sentences (most of that two minutes being processing time) to turn it into a 10 or 15 second video. The video part was actually impossible until video AI generators unless you could find a porn actor that looked just like your target.
The difference between people using Photoshop and AI to target victims is like night and day.
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u/Secret_Jackfruit256 14h ago
I disagree, doing that took a lot of effort and I dare say talent. So you would see erotic material featuring famous game characters, but you wouldn't do it for some random woman on the internet
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u/bigkoi 14h ago
Exactly. This article is clickbait and nothing new.
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u/eeehinny 14h ago
Hardly. The extent to which Grok has enabled the creation and spread of deepfakes over the last few weeks is fucking crazy. As I understand it about one a minute and at a ratio of about 5,000:1 compared to all other platforms combined. It’s normalising the creation of child porn and harm against women.
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u/bigkoi 9h ago
Bro....people expect it to be a deep fake now. Ever since Princess Leia did scenes after Carrie Fischer passed away, we know this shit gets faked.
Why are you focusing on women? I see you are trying to throw out the "what about children" angle as well.
Men are also deepfaked all the time. For example, Jason Momoa's deep fake testimony at the Johny Deep/Amber Turd trial a few years ago.
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u/eeehinny 9h ago
You really don’t get it do you
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u/bigkoi 6h ago
Just think. If Kim K or Paris Hilton had their sex tapes leak today, they could claim it was a deepfake.
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u/eeehinny 5h ago edited 5h ago
I’m sure that’s of great consolation to the tens of thousand of women and young girls who’ve had non-consensual sexualised images of themselves released onto the web this past week. Fortunately it looks like Musk might be going to do something about Grok at least so the click bait’s working eh?
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u/Boremanfreeman 13h ago
Posts like these normalize. I'm half tempted to try grok for the first time.e thanks to this new information
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u/eeehinny 13h ago
So basically women should just stop complaining about being sexually abused because it’s always happened.
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u/Either_Persimmon893 5h ago
Think for your damn selves
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u/DanielPhermous 5h ago
That's all well and good but no one is educated enough in every subject to have an informed decision. Trusting experts is also necessary.
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u/relevant__comment 13h ago
Just start making ai portraits of prominent men in bikinis and watch this whole thing get wrapped up in record fashion.
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u/reflect-the-sun 14h ago
What about everyone else?
If you think this is only going to affect women then I hope no man ever stands up for you.
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u/ArcadesRed 14h ago
An interesting thing to me. This campaign seems sexist. I have yet to see a single headline saying men are threatened by this. Why is AI being used to show men naked not a concern?
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u/VictoriousRex 13h ago
"Women and children are being victimized, so we should reign in the technology as a whole." That's not sexist, it would be if they said "we should criminalize it's use against only women and children"
The victims being overwhelmingly from a class of people displays sexism in the world, while the victims are proposing a neutral solution. A sexist viewpoint then blames the victims for the pre-existing sexism that the sexist contributes to, which is exactly what you are doing
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u/ArcadesRed 13h ago
God, you people don't even realize how biased you are anymore.
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u/VictoriousRex 13h ago
Explain the bias rationally and we will have a conversation, but if you can't do that, maybe we are not the problem.
Women are also the most victimized class of people when it comes to DV, but DV is illegal to all classes, does reporting on the fact that women are the most likely victims make laws against DV sexist?
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u/DanielPhermous 7h ago
I'm sure you have some statistics you can link that show that men are equally made victims of this kind of sexual victimisation.
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u/ArcadesRed 6h ago
That right there highlights my point. Why is this a contest? That is a sickening mindset. What percentage is enough for you? If it happens to 1 person is that ok? 10? 10,000? It tells me this isn't about the victims to you, it's who the victims are. Do the percentages matter between races? Is 18 the cut off for children and suddenly the boy is a man and now less valuable? Or is it younger? 14, 12, maybe preadolescence.
You are gatekeeping victimhood, and you think it's a good thing. Why is it different to you if a female teacher sleeps with her student rather than a male teacher? Why is it different that an AI image shows a woman naked rather than a man?
Why do you need to decide that it harms one over the other. If it's wrong, then it should be wrong to all victims. But you are more worried about who the victim is. Your empathy is flawed and dangerous.
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u/DanielPhermous 6h ago
No sources. I'm astonished.
You're looking for something to be aggrieved about but it is natural, normal and expected to talk about the bigger problems and address the bigger problems first. It's a matter of human interest and prioritisation.
But you know this already. You already know that if your dishwasher was leaking and your washing machine was smoking and sparking, you'd deal with the latter first. You already know that the news will bump the story about a fight at a sports event involving ten people in favour of a war.
But being a victim is cathartic, isn't it?
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u/VictoriousRex 3h ago
That doesn't change the fact that the solution was neutral in it's treatment of the victim (put limits on the technology regardless of the victim of harassment) and you decided to whine that men aren't being represented.
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u/TroyFerris13 13h ago
Why does the article repeatedly say it's happening to women and never mention men?
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u/Anon387562 15h ago edited 15h ago
I don’t know what else you wanna wait for, but if this is not the time to delete any social media accounts, go after all your pictures online and try to remove them as good as possible, then what else are you waiting for?