How AI and tech companies are driving an 'epidemic' of sexual violence against women – Susan Dalgety
The internet, largely created and controlled by men, has become a misogynist’s playground
Georgia Harrison’s CV is the ultimate symbol of contemporary culture: expelled from school because of her then-undiagnosed ADHD, only to be catapulted into the unreal world of reality TV when barely out her teens.
She’s done them all: The Only Way is Essex, Challenge: War of the Worlds, Celebrity Ex on the Beach, and of course Love Island. The impossibly glossy dating show where good-looking singles pair up – on camera – in a bid to win a five-figure sum and fleeting fame.
Viewers, or should that be voyeurs, choose who stays and who is evicted from the luxury resort. It is, apparently, all good, clean British fun which encapsulates modern life: digital dating, plastic surgery, a life played out online.
Tech as a ‘force for good’?
But Georgia’s life imploded when, in 2020, her then boyfriend and fellow reality TV star, Stephen Bear, uploaded CCTV footage of them having sex to OnlyFans, without her consent. Bear was eventually sentenced to 21 months in prison, and Harrison, who had waived her anonymity during Bear’s trial, embarked on a new career as a campaigner against image-based abuse.
Under the last Tory government, she secured changes to the 2023 Online Reform Act, and on Wednesday, she delivered a speech to the Labour party conference, telling delegates that she dreams of a country where, when a woman reports an online image of her body is being used without her consent, it will be taken down there and then, not in 48 hours as is currently proposed. “I daydream that when she reaches out, drowning at two in the morning, what answers her is not an AI chatbot, but a human voice that says, ‘I believe you, this is what happens next…’”
Harrison was the warm-up act for the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, who promised an “interventionist state” that will regulate and police the online space so that people are safe. The UK will be “pioneers of tech as a force for good”, she said.
Nandy insisted that the social media ban for under-16s which comes into force next March is only a staging post in the government’s plans to improve online safety, and she won’t let powerful tech bros like Elon Musk stand in her way.
A ‘national emergency’
Earlier, in her conference speech, Health Secretary Yvette Cooper had argued that violence against women and girls was now an “epidemic”. And on Monday, First Minister John Swinney called the rates of violence against women a “national emergency”, with more than 200 such crimes reported every day in Scotland. No one knows how many more go unreported.
More than 30 years after Edinburgh District Council led the way with its Zero Tolerance campaign against domestic abuse, women and girls are more at risk than ever, fuelled by an unregulated internet that has normalised hard-core pornography and the physical and emotional abuse of women.
Choking a woman during sex has become mainstream. In my small social circle, I know of two young women whose ‘boyfriends’ posted intimate pictures of them on social media, almost destroying their lives before they had finished secondary school.
READ MORE: The shocking rise of violence against women in Scotland requires a whole-society response
Commercial sexual exploitation of vulnerable women
The so-called progressive left continues to argue that the commercial sexual exploitation of even the most vulnerable women is legitimate. Prostitution is “meaningful and fulfilling work”, claims Scottish Green MSP and justice spokesperson Maggie Chapman.
Little wonder then that boys grow up thinking that girls are nothing more than sexual objects, to be strangled for pleasure, or that beating a woman is a positive sign of their masculinity.
Even the decade-long fight to secure women’s sex-based rights had its roots in misogyny. I am not the only woman to have been told I am “too old and too ugly” by young men protesting their right to identify as female, a phenomenon that also has its roots in online pornography.
Labour’s conference was largely dominated by Andy Burnham’s speech and his commitment to reform social care for frail, older people. Only time will tell if the Prime Minister’s emotional promise of a National Care Service for England will be more successful than the Scottish government’s botched attempt to establish a similar system.
And while better and more affordable social care demands urgent attention across the UK, I would argue that tackling the epidemic of violence, misogynistic abuse and sexual exploitation that women and girls face, almost daily now, is at least of equal importance to the future health of our society.
READ MORE: 'Immediate change' is needed to tackle violence against women and girls, says Stacy Hunter's brother
Generative AI has increased online abuse
Swinney’s sudden conversion to the cause of a woman’s right to live free from fear is to be cautiously welcomed too. He has promised his “personal leadership”, but a nagging question remains: why was it only this summer that he realised the issue needed “increased priority”?
Women’s rights campaigners have been arguing for decades for changes in the law and a shift in culture, only to be sidetracked by politicians, including Swinney and Nandy, who tried to argue that biological sex was nothing more than a feeling.
I only hope it’s not too late. The emergence of AI as a part of our daily lives poses a huge threat to women. The United Nations recently reported that generative AI has increased the speed and volume of online abuse, and research by Durham University shows that AI chatbots are creating new forms of abuse, including “normalising” incest and child sexual abuse, as well as enabling sophisticated online stalking.
Violence against women is as ancient as humanity – the most obvious, and dangerous, manifestation of the entrenched inequality between men and women. It’s little wonder then that the internet, largely created and controlled by men, is a misogynist’s playground.
It will take tremendous effort and significant political will to transform it into a safe space for all, but there is no option but to try.