Monday, January 6, 2025
Islamabad (UrduPoint News International/ Pakistan Point News - 11th Jan, 2025 ) From the US to Italy, Britain and Pakistan, female politicians are being targeted by deepfake pornography or sexual images generated by artificial intelligence. Researchers say this disturbing trend is threatening women’s participation in public life.
Pakistan: Deepfake a weapon used against female politicians
How are audio and video created using deepfake technology?
Experts say the online growth of non-consensual deepfake images is far faster than global efforts to regulate the technology.
One reason for this is the growing number of cheap apps with artificial intelligence that can show any woman’s image without clothing.
Researchers say these images are often used to tarnish the reputation of women working in public, jeopardize their careers and undermine public trust. In this way, national security can also be jeopardized by creating situations such as blackmail or harassment.
Female politicians targeted by deepfake porn in the US
The American Sunlight Project, a group that researches misinformation in the US, has identified more than 35,000 instances of deepfake content. The content on various pornographic websites is about 26 members of Congress, 25 of whom are women.
A report published by the group last month found that one in six women in Congress has been a victim of such artificial intelligence-generated images.
“Female lawmakers are being targeted by artificial intelligence-generated deepfake pornography at an alarming rate,” said Nina Jankovic, chief executive of the ASP.
The ASP did not release the names of the female lawmakers shown in the images, but said it had privately notified their offices.
Female politicians targeted in Britain and Italy
In Britain, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Merkel is among more than 30 British female politicians targeted by a deepfake porn website.
The report says the website used artificial intelligence technology to transform the images of about a dozen politicians into nude photos without their consent.
Technological advances have given rise to a rapidly expanding cottage industry of artificial intelligence-assisted sexual content, where a wide range of AI-powered tools are available to digitally remove clothing from images of any person or create deepfake sexual videos using sexual text prompts.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has filed a claim for 100,000 euros in damages against two people accused of making deepfake pornographic videos of her and posting them on American pornographic websites.
According to the Italian news agency ANSA, Meloni told a court last year that it was a form of violence against women:
“With the advent of artificial intelligence, if we allow a woman’s face to be superimposed on another woman’s body, our daughters will find themselves in the same situation, which is why I consider this war justified.”
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Incidents of deepfakes targeting female politicians in Pakistan
AFP fact-checkers in Pakistan have called a deepfake video showing a female lawmaker, Meena Majeed, publicly hugging an unrelated male minister a fake.
In another incident, Uzma Bukhari, the information minister for Pakistan’s Punjab province, said she was deeply distressed when she found a deepfake video online in which her face was superimposed on the naked body of an Indian actress.
“The alarming impact of AI-generated images and videos used to harass women in politics is a growing trend,” warned the non-profit Tech Policy Press last year.
Pakistan lacks legislation to tackle sexual deepfakes. UK law makes sharing deepfakes a crime, and the government has promised to ban their production this year, but no firm timetable has been set.
A handful of US states, including California and Florida, have passed laws making sexually explicit deepfakes a criminal offence, and campaigners are calling on Congress to urgently pass a series of bills to stop their creation and spread.
While celebrities such as singer Taylor Swift and high-profile politicians have been victims of deepfakes, experts say women who are not in the public eye are also being victimised.
The AI-generated fake images were almost completely removed from websites after the ASP notified female members of Congress. However, the ASP says, “Women who lack the resources provided to members of Congress are unlikely to get a response from deepfake pornography sites as quickly if they themselves initiate requests to remove content from these websites.”
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