Artificial Intelligence and the New Landscape of Abuse
When NO MORE convened its first Tech Summit in March 2024, the world was on the cusp of a technological renaissance. Open-source generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT had only recently entered public life, fundamentally changing how people interacted with technology.
What then felt emergent has since become urgent.
By the second Tech Summit in 2025, Generative AI tools had advanced from text to image creation, with major platforms rolling out image generation capabilities to millions of users. Around this time, a study by the Oxford Internet Institute found around 35,000 publicly downloadable deepfake generators—many explicitly designed to produce non-consensual nude or sexual imagery—96% of which targeted identifiable women.
Now, the scale and accessibility of this harm is impossible to ignore. Major platforms like Grok have come under fire for generating synthetic abuse material, while Apple and Google have been exposed for hosting dozens of nudification apps in their app stores. A recent report by the Internet Watch Foundation documented a 260-fold surge in AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM), a figure that defies comprehension.
While researching for this piece, a simple search for the history of nudification apps yielded articles ranking the “best” tools for digitally removing clothing as top results. This is now our algorithmic reality: systems designed to optimize engagement are actively amplifying tools built for abuse. The harm is not hidden. It’s surfaced, ranked, and recommended.
How AI Enables Abuse and Why it Matters
To understand the scale of the problem, it helps to understand what AI has actually changed. For most of history, the creation of non-consensual intimate or sexual imagery required either physical access to that person or considerable technical skill to manipulate images convincingly. Now, these barriers have been largely removed.
Today, a user with no technical background can upload an image of any person and, within seconds, generate a realistic intimate image of them. The result is a form of harm that is easy to inflict, difficult to contain, and devastating to survive.
Victims describe the discovery of synthetic images of themselves in terms that mirror other forms of sexual abuse: loss of autonomy, lasting fear, shame, and profound psychological distress. That these images are fabricated does not make them feel any less real; it only makes the powerlessness feel more complete.
Another Path: AI and Prevention
The same technologies driving harm also hold genuine potential for prevention, if designed and deployed responsibly.
AI can be used to detect patterns of abuse across large datasets, helping identify harmful content earlier and at scale that human moderators alone cannot match. It can support moderation systems that go beyond reactive reporting, flagging harmful material before it spreads widely and irreversibly. For survivors, AI-powered tools could also improve pathways to support, helping people locate and report synthetic images of themselves or connect more quickly with resources.
But these applications require intention: investment, survivor-centered design, and accountability from the companies building them. The capability to counter harm often exists in the same organizations generating it. The next step is to deploy it.
A Defining Moment for Action
The Tech Summit was created to bring these tensions into focus, convening the people shaping technology alongside those working to end abuse.
The 2026 Global Summit on Tech-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence, presented in partnership with UN Women, is a global call to action, bringing together technologists, policymakers, advocates, survivors, and consumers to confront a rapidly evolving ecosystem that we can choose to challenge or accept.
The question is no longer whether AI will transform the landscape of abuse. It already has. The question is now whether we will allow it to scale harm unchecked or build a different trajectory, one where technology is part of the solution.
Want to go deeper? Join the virtual Global Summit on Tech-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence, hosted in partnership with UN Women, to be part of the conversations shaping how we address gender-based violence in the digital age through collaboration, innovation, and collective action.
Together We Can End Domestic and Sexual Violence
