Sexual Violence

In recent years, alongside unpredictable technological progress, violence against women worldwide is no longer limited to physical, real, or even verbal realms. This violence has gradually migrated to the digital space and powerfully expanded within it.

In reality, what once seemed like an open space for promoting freedoms and communication has now become an arena rife with stigma, intimidation, and gender discrimination; an arena in which many AI tools and applications – meant to make life easier and fairer – play a role in its formation.

From Voice Assistants to Chatbots: Targeting the “Female Voice”
According to a report from Raseef22, in 2020, a Brazilian bank revealed that its voice assistant named “Bia” had received tens of thousands of sexual and threatening messages from customers in just one year, including phrases like “I will rape you” or “I want to see you naked,” simply because it had a female voice. Similarly, female-voiced chatbots like “Siri” and “Alexa” have also faced verbal abuse and insults. This indicates that even the presence of a “female entity” – merely in the virtual space – is enough to open the gates to violence, threats, and sexual harassment.

From Fake Images to Extortion: New Forms of Violence
From fake images and videos to defamation campaigns and cyber extortion by “virtual friends,” AI now produces various and numerous forms of sexual and digital violence, primarily targeting women and girls.

Algorithms as a Mirror of Discrimination
Laura Bates, in an article for The Guardian, explains how the large language model “LLaMA” paved the way for the creation of the “Chat AI” platform; a platform that allows users to talk to intelligent robots and assume roles that depict violence against women. According to her, this website, which reaps huge profits, is just one of thousands of applications that “institutionalize misogyny in our future.”

Alarming Statistics: 99% of Deepfake Victims are Women
According to data, generative AI tools – whether those that produce images, videos, or text – have made the creation of “deepfakes” easy and fast. A report from the New York Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence shows that 96% of deepfake videos are sexual in nature and 99% of their victims are women.

This content is not merely manipulated images, but a tool for social violence that can become a weapon for extorting women, silencing them, or depriving them of the public sphere. In many cases, these images lead to the destruction of emotional and social relationships, psychological breakdown for women, withdrawal from the work environment, and even isolation. It can be said that women are caught in a terrifying equation: any photo of them can become a threat, and any threat can become a painful, life-destroying reality.

Reinforcing Stereotypes and Inequalities
Numerous studies show that AI itself reprodu stereotypes about women, limiting their roles to domestic work, while downplaying their presence in professional, political, or leadership roles. This bias is embedded in the data itself and stems from a digital culture shaped over decades by a patriarchal lens.

The United Nations, in a February 2025 report, emphasized that AI tools often “reinforce and reproduce gender inequality.” These tools rely on biased information where women are stigmatized and demeaned, and men are placed in powerful roles.

The Lucrative Trade in Non-Consensual Intimate Content
AI-generated violence has itself become a lucrative trade. There are now specialized platforms selling services for generating sexual images and videos using AI. Recent international reports indicate that a large portion of images and videos published without their owners’ consent fall into the category of “non-consensual intimate imagery,” and the majority of its victims are women.

A large-scale study with over 16,000 participants in ten countries found that 22.6% of people had experienced image-based sexual abuse – whether through publication or threat of publication. Women in this study reported the profound effects of this phenomenon on their mental health and social lives, and a constant feeling of losing control over their body image.

The Situation in the Arab World: A Silent and Compounded Violence
In the Arab region, this problem appears more complex for reasons beyond technology: conservative social norms, weak legal protections, and fear of stigma are all factors that make women more vulnerable to this violence and less able to seek support.

• In Lebanon, organizations like “SMEX” have documented an increase in digital campaigns against female journalists and activists.
• In Jordan, officials have warned of the spread of anonymous accounts publishing fake content against influential and media women.
• In Iraq, “Human Rights Watch” has documented the spread of fake private videos used to silence the voices of women active in politics and media.
• In Egypt, data from the Public Prosecution shows that most cyber extortion cases against women are based on fake sexual images produced by electronic applications.

The Ultimate Battle is Not Technological; It’s Social and Cultural
Devindra Gadoon, an AI consultant, told AFP: “AI doesn’t invent misogyny; it reflects and amplifies what already exists. If the general public rewards this type of content with millions of likes, the algorithms and AI creators will continue to produce it. The main battle is not merely technological, but social and cultural.”

In summary, AI is not neutral; it operates within a knowledge framework with a long history of entrenched gender discrimination. The data on which models are trained is saturated with reductive representations of women that emphasize the “objectification” of their bodies and downplay their professional and leadership presence. Consequently, some intelligent programs transform women into “material” that can be reproduced and consumed, while men remain in the dominant position.

This technological system reproduces discrimination and entrenches toxic patriarchy. Although its tools are now in everyone’s hands, its effects extend beyond phones and screens, directly targeting women’s lives, bodies, and freedom.

Aljazeera