Imma be real with you FT.com I’m not buying a $75 per month subscription
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For the global poor:
>In late December, over the course of just nine days, xAI’s Grok tool was used to generate and post online millions of non-consensual intimate images of women. Requests to alter women’s images to add bruises, blood and even bullet holes were instantly granted.
>Racism was deeply intertwined with the misogyny: Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zendaya, Cardi B and other prominent politicians and celebrities were targeted with requests to portray them with white skin. A Jewish woman found that an AI image had been created showing her in a bikini standing outside Auschwitz. Millions of the images featured child sexual abuse.
>Just a few weeks later, Waymo announced that it plans to debut its driverless cars in London by the end of 2026. These vehicles have been in development for years but will still have to prove that they meet strict safety standards, including protection from misuse via hacking or cyber threats, before being allowed on British roads. By contrast, AI tools that enable the harassment, humiliation, abuse and relentless hounding of women apparently require no such guardrails.
>During the past two decades, the Big Tech lobby, well oiled by money and unprecedented proximity to those in positions of power, has done an overwhelmingly successful job of convincing us that regulation in their sector is a near-impossible task. Regulation, the argument goes, is the mortal enemy of innovation. It will strangle creativity, stall progress and may even obliterate the entire industry.
>“Overreach of government regulation can pose a grave threat to nascent, promising technologies. This is particularly true in the case of AI”, read an article published in International Banker late last year, around the same time that Nvidia, the company creating AI data chips, reached a record market capitalisation of more than $5tn and became the most valuable company in the world.
>The result is that we are sleepwalking into a new age of gender inequality, propelled at breathtaking speed by the implementation of untested AI tools. The explosion of non-consensual deepfake pornography and app-facilitated sexual abuse is merely one aspect of a tech revolution that is reshaping women’s lives. Less well publicised — although no less prolific — are the ways in which existing forms of inequality and discrimination are being repeated and intensified by tools that have been trained on biased or misleading data. From sex to healthcare, education and criminal justice, new technologies are enabling the amplification of ancient patterns of gendered power and abuse.
>Women make up just 12 per cent of AI researchers and female founders receive only 2 per cent of venture capital funding. We are not the ones building this new world. But we will have no choice about living in it.
>The situation feels particularly bleak in the wake of the release of millions of documents pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. It is hard to confront the scale of Epstein’s abuse of power. But it reveals the ways in which unseen networks of male-dominated wealth, power and influence allow misogyny to flourish. We cannot simply trust that there is some invisible system of checks and balances in place.
>Part of the problem, of course, is that we are still playing catch-up. In the past year, lawmakers around the world have tried to curb some of the most egregious harms enacted using AI tools.
>Ocasio-Cortez and other activists and lawmakers from across the political spectrum are currently campaigning for the passage of the Defiance Act, which would allow victims of non-consensual sexual AI deepfakes to sue creators and distributors of such material for damages.
>In the UK, the government has brought into force a new law criminalising the creation of such images, and this week Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a change that will require AI chatbots to abide by illegal content duties as part of the Online Safety Act.
>But these responses are too often piecemeal, reactive and riddled with loopholes.
>Part of the reluctance to legislate stems from the notion that the potential harms are intangible. What exists online, many people believe, has few real-world consequences. If a sexualised image isn’t real, then how significant can the impact really be? The abuse meted out via Grok, many will argue, while grim, does not justify wide-reaching regulation that will constrain the entire sector.
>Grok, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. So-called “nudify” tools, enabling men to abuse women at the click of a button, continue to flood search engines and app stores, with research from the Tech Transparency Project finding that more than 100 such apps were available on the Google Play Store or Apple App Store in early 2026. Analytics provider AppMagic estimated that those apps had been downloaded some 705mn times worldwide and generated $117mn in revenue. The tech giants take a cut of their revenue, therefore actively profiting from the abuse of women and girls that such apps facilitate. Both companies told CNBC they had removed or suspended some apps from their stores after the investigation.
>In researching these kinds of tools during the past two years, I have seen first-hand just how devastating their impact can be. On schoolgirls who have dropped out of education altogether after becoming targets. Young women who have developed PTSD that will affect them for the rest of their lives. Women who have been at risk of losing custody of their children. Women who have been forced out of their jobs. Women at risk of so-called “honour”-based violence as a result of deepfake images. Children who have been blackmailed by other children threatening to release more images if they do not perform sexual acts. The proliferation of AI-generated rape and child sexual abuse material serving endlessly to normalise and fetishise these crimes.
>Yes, the harm is real.
>During the past few months, deeply concerning accounts have emerged from women who have been covertly filmed by men using “smart glasses”’. Described by Meta as “AI glasses”, the latest versions feature built-in tools that generate real-time information about what the wearer is looking at. Feminist organisations have already raised the alarm about the possibility of such technology being abused to identify women and reveal personal information about them.
>Around the world, women have described the derogatory and abusive comments they received after videos of them were filmed and released online, often on monetised accounts, without their knowledge or consent. According to a BBC investigation, hundreds of such videos had been posted on TikTok and Instagram, apparently “filmed secretly — using Meta smart glasses”. Meta responded that it would “continually review opportunities to enhance our AI glasses, informed by customer feedback and ongoing research”
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Imma be real with you FT.com I’m not buying a $75 per month subscription
For the global poor:
>In late December, over the course of just nine days, xAI’s Grok tool was used to generate and post online millions of non-consensual intimate images of women. Requests to alter women’s images to add bruises, blood and even bullet holes were instantly granted.
>Racism was deeply intertwined with the misogyny: Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zendaya, Cardi B and other prominent politicians and celebrities were targeted with requests to portray them with white skin. A Jewish woman found that an AI image had been created showing her in a bikini standing outside Auschwitz. Millions of the images featured child sexual abuse.
>Just a few weeks later, Waymo announced that it plans to debut its driverless cars in London by the end of 2026. These vehicles have been in development for years but will still have to prove that they meet strict safety standards, including protection from misuse via hacking or cyber threats, before being allowed on British roads. By contrast, AI tools that enable the harassment, humiliation, abuse and relentless hounding of women apparently require no such guardrails.
>During the past two decades, the Big Tech lobby, well oiled by money and unprecedented proximity to those in positions of power, has done an overwhelmingly successful job of convincing us that regulation in their sector is a near-impossible task. Regulation, the argument goes, is the mortal enemy of innovation. It will strangle creativity, stall progress and may even obliterate the entire industry.
>“Overreach of government regulation can pose a grave threat to nascent, promising technologies. This is particularly true in the case of AI”, read an article published in International Banker late last year, around the same time that Nvidia, the company creating AI data chips, reached a record market capitalisation of more than $5tn and became the most valuable company in the world.
>The result is that we are sleepwalking into a new age of gender inequality, propelled at breathtaking speed by the implementation of untested AI tools. The explosion of non-consensual deepfake pornography and app-facilitated sexual abuse is merely one aspect of a tech revolution that is reshaping women’s lives. Less well publicised — although no less prolific — are the ways in which existing forms of inequality and discrimination are being repeated and intensified by tools that have been trained on biased or misleading data. From sex to healthcare, education and criminal justice, new technologies are enabling the amplification of ancient patterns of gendered power and abuse.
>Women make up just 12 per cent of AI researchers and female founders receive only 2 per cent of venture capital funding. We are not the ones building this new world. But we will have no choice about living in it.
>The situation feels particularly bleak in the wake of the release of millions of documents pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. It is hard to confront the scale of Epstein’s abuse of power. But it reveals the ways in which unseen networks of male-dominated wealth, power and influence allow misogyny to flourish. We cannot simply trust that there is some invisible system of checks and balances in place.
>Part of the problem, of course, is that we are still playing catch-up. In the past year, lawmakers around the world have tried to curb some of the most egregious harms enacted using AI tools.
>Ocasio-Cortez and other activists and lawmakers from across the political spectrum are currently campaigning for the passage of the Defiance Act, which would allow victims of non-consensual sexual AI deepfakes to sue creators and distributors of such material for damages.
>In the UK, the government has brought into force a new law criminalising the creation of such images, and this week Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a change that will require AI chatbots to abide by illegal content duties as part of the Online Safety Act.
>But these responses are too often piecemeal, reactive and riddled with loopholes.
>Part of the reluctance to legislate stems from the notion that the potential harms are intangible. What exists online, many people believe, has few real-world consequences. If a sexualised image isn’t real, then how significant can the impact really be? The abuse meted out via Grok, many will argue, while grim, does not justify wide-reaching regulation that will constrain the entire sector.
>Grok, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. So-called “nudify” tools, enabling men to abuse women at the click of a button, continue to flood search engines and app stores, with research from the Tech Transparency Project finding that more than 100 such apps were available on the Google Play Store or Apple App Store in early 2026. Analytics provider AppMagic estimated that those apps had been downloaded some 705mn times worldwide and generated $117mn in revenue. The tech giants take a cut of their revenue, therefore actively profiting from the abuse of women and girls that such apps facilitate. Both companies told CNBC they had removed or suspended some apps from their stores after the investigation.
>In researching these kinds of tools during the past two years, I have seen first-hand just how devastating their impact can be. On schoolgirls who have dropped out of education altogether after becoming targets. Young women who have developed PTSD that will affect them for the rest of their lives. Women who have been at risk of losing custody of their children. Women who have been forced out of their jobs. Women at risk of so-called “honour”-based violence as a result of deepfake images. Children who have been blackmailed by other children threatening to release more images if they do not perform sexual acts. The proliferation of AI-generated rape and child sexual abuse material serving endlessly to normalise and fetishise these crimes.
>Yes, the harm is real.
>During the past few months, deeply concerning accounts have emerged from women who have been covertly filmed by men using “smart glasses”’. Described by Meta as “AI glasses”, the latest versions feature built-in tools that generate real-time information about what the wearer is looking at. Feminist organisations have already raised the alarm about the possibility of such technology being abused to identify women and reveal personal information about them.
>Around the world, women have described the derogatory and abusive comments they received after videos of them were filmed and released online, often on monetised accounts, without their knowledge or consent. According to a BBC investigation, hundreds of such videos had been posted on TikTok and Instagram, apparently “filmed secretly — using Meta smart glasses”. Meta responded that it would “continually review opportunities to enhance our AI glasses, informed by customer feedback and ongoing research”