antiz’s Reviews > The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny > Status Update

In 2023, the FBI released a PSA about the rise of deepfakes, along with 10 recommendations.
Every single recommendation was about precautions people (aka women, since they make up 99% of victims) can take
E.g. have private social media accounts
But the perpetrators are often people known to the victim.
And removing all photos from the public sphere is largely impossible.
And we shouldn’t have to anyway.

“If we really want to tackle this issue, at some point we are going to have to stop the victim-blaming, the ‘advice’, the judgement and shame, and instead put our focus where it should have been all along: on the perpetrators.”

“As with so many other forms of sexual violence, the public response – including that of law enforcement – often seems to focus on how women can avoid becoming victims of deep-fake pornography, rather than preventing people from creating and sharing it in the first place.”

AI uses so much electricity and fossil fuels.
“Now imagine how much of that power we are burning just to satisfy the misogynistic fantasies of predatory men.”

“It is obscene that our world functions in this way and that everybody acts as though it is just the way things are and will always be.”

“Repeatedly, women of colour are worst impacted by technology-facilitated gender-based violence. They have frequently been the ones sounding early alarms and pointing out patterns of abuse (…) well before [other demographics of people] propelled the issue into the headlines. (…) [yet they are heard and helped the least]”

In cases of school kid sexual abuse images, money is being spent on protecting the school’s image, not on e.g. educating the children about why it’s wrong etc.
“This sets a worrying tone for the inevitable cases that will follow: schools focus on reputational damage limitation first; victim welfare second.”

“It is clear that we cannot rely on legislation alone to tackle this problem. Public opinion and social attitudes are going to be crucial in turning the tide.”

E.g. some legislation suggestions have been to add an AI watermark. But this isn’t enough–even if ppl knew the pics were fake, women would still feel real impacts.
E.g. laws against political deepfakes but not sexual deepfakes. Obvs not good enough

White, western views of intimacy also fail to protect all women, of different races or cultures.
E.g. some cases in Iran and Pakistan, where depicting women without their hijab or with a man can result in her getting killed.

So many cases described of 12-14yr old schoolgirls having deepfakes created of them and shared by male classmates in many different countries. Yet none of the boys face action by their schools or police.
Teachers are largely unaware of the issue and are woefully underprepared for the rise in this form of sexual violence that is likely to occur.

“In a recent study, Genevieve Oh tracked the rise of deepfakes and found that 143,000 videos in forty popular websites were viewed 4.2 billion times. Just on of the most popular websites alone gets around 17 million different visitors a month.”

Set to increase too