Deepfakes, online violence driving women from public life

A team of global researchers on Thursday said that deepfakes, AI-assisted rape and unwanted advances are pushing women out of public life.

The report by UN Women, City St George’s (University of London) and data forensic company TheNerve found that online violence against women in public life is becoming increasingly technologically sophisticated.

“AI-assisted ‘virtual rape’ is now at the fingertips of perpetrators. This phenomenon accelerates the harm from online violence inflicted on women in public life. This violence serves to fuel the reversal of women’s hard-won rights in a climate of rising authoritarianism, democratic backsliding and networked misogyny,” said Julie Posetti, Professor of Journalism and Chair of the Centre for Journalism and Democracy at City St George’s.

“The rollback of women’s rights is enabled and exacerbated by technologies which – by design –amplify misogynistic hate speech for profit,” added Posetti, project’s principal researcher and the report’s lead author.

The report analysed the experiences of 641 women journalists and media workers, activists, and human rights’ defenders from 119 countries.

The women were surveyed in late 2025, and the researchers concluded that 27 per cent of women respondents were targeted with unsolicited sexual advances via direct message, receiving unwanted intimate images, “cyberflashing”, sexual innuendos or nonconsensual sexting.

About 12 per cent of respondents had their personal images, including those of an intimate nature, shared without their consent, and 6 per cent of respondents have been subjected to deepfakes or manipulated images and videos.

These attacks were often deliberate and coordinated, aiming to silence women in public life while undermining their professional credibility and personal reputations, found the study.

The impacts include an alarming rate of mental health diagnoses and self-censorship: Nearly one-quarter (24 per cent) of respondents have experienced anxiety and/or depression linked to online violence; 13 per cent reported being diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); and 41 per cent of respondents said they self-censored on social media to avoid being abused, and 19 per cent were self-censoring at work as a result.

The study found that while 25 per cent of respondents had reported incidents of online violence to the police and 15 per cent had taken legal action, justice still eludes them.

“The chilling effect of online violence is pushing women out of public life. Law enforcement is outsourcing the responsibility for protection to the survivors by telling women to remove themselves from social media, to avoid speaking publicly about controversial issues, to move into less visible roles at work, or to take leave from their respective careers,” said Co-author Lea Hellmueller, Associate Professor of Journalism, and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at City St George’s.