Two weeks ago, I watched a video on X (formerly Twitter) of a man using AI to digitally undress a hijab-wearing Muslim woman on an Indian train. After clicking pictures of her, his simple one-line command could sexualise her on his device and strip her image of clothes and dignity. The person who recorded the video complained to the Railway Police, who then trashed him. Even watching the video sent shivers down my spine because I knew that I could be at the receiving end of a crime as heinous as this.
Poet-author Meena Kandasamy, whose book Fieldwork as a Sex Object deals with this issue, spoke at an event conducted by The Hindu on August 21. She said women’s agency does not exist any more, especially since big tech is inherently misogynistic. The concept of bodily autonomy, particularly for women, has ceased to exist, she said, making the world even scarier than it already is. Kandasamy herself has battled a decade of online trolling, so much so that she has often been been subjected to rape threats for her opinions.
An article in The Hindu about deepfakes and its misuse says AI-generated pornographic clips cause victims to deal with shame, trauma, and judgment, sometimes even from those closest to them. “What’s even more heartbreaking is that proving a video is fake doesn’t always fix the damage. Once something is out there, it spreads fast and the Internet rarely forgets,” writes Nehal Saxena.
A report in The New York Times published in January this year said that over nine days, Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot generated and posted 4.4 million images, of which at least 41% were sexualised images of women. In that time period, 1.8 million nude images of women were created on the site.
Seema Anand, a London-based author and creator who often speaks about sex education in her videos, filed an FIR regarding a number of AI-generated sexual images of her. The 63-year-old posted a video saying the incident made her feel “physically sick”.
What, then, is the solution for women who already face real-life physical threats, including stalking?
According to Tech Policy Press, 61 countries’ data protection and privacy authorities across four continents have put AI image-generation companies on notice, declaring that nonconsensual intimate imagery is a privacy violation, and regulators intend to act on it. In India, under the Digital Data Protection Act, 2023, the circulation of non-consensual sexual content is prohibited, but generation is not.
Nehal says technology must be created by big tech to counter deepfakes, and stronger laws are essential. She also advocates for digital literacy for young students in schools and colleges.
But the truth is that this is not enough. Women do not need to have a digital presence to experience such extreme violation.
WORDSWORTH
Oocyte cryopreservation: U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been posting videos on the Internet about women freezing their eggs. Oocyte cryopreservation is a process where a woman’s eggs are taken from her ovaries, flash-frozen using a method called vitrification, and stored at very cold temperatures for future use. Cortez, who has been seen in a video injecting herself with medication just before a TV interview, says that she was doing it “to show more depictions of women having full lives in every context and every choice.” She intends to freeze her eggs, keeping in mind her demanding political career. She also says that there are double standards in politics because women face intrusive questions regarding age and family planning, whereas men in similar public roles do not.
TOOLKIT
A two-day photography fellowship for women called Kanavu by the Chennai Photo Biennale is aimed at equipping them with the skills to become visual storytellers. On August 29 and 30, a two-day workshop in Madurai will be conducted to ensure that women wielding the camera become more confident. It first began in 2022 and has already benefitted several women, particularly from small towns, like Theni-based Chandini Ramesh who runs a baby photography venture called The Little Bud Photography. Read this article for all the details.
OUCH!
“But is it about the training? Because I think that for women, it’s more like, climbing on the rock and climbing maybe on the lead, for doing it as a hobby, it’s quite fun, and lots of women [are] doing it. But when you go into the world class, you need to go to the gym, you need to train with weights, and all that stuff, and this is more the ‘boy thing,’ right?”
Austrian sports commentator Claudio Sunk at the World Climbing Europe Youth Series in St. Pölten
Thirupurasundari Sevvel
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Thirupurasundari Sevvel, architect and historian, who has curated, along with The Hindu’s library team, The Hindu’s archival photo exhibit titled Madras On Stage is a big proponent of women telling their own tales. In her organisation, Nam Veedu Nam Oor Nam Kadhai, a history collective which conducts heritage walks, there is a focus on women who make history. “This is clearly intentional. They make up half my team,” she says. The photo exhibit in the office premises tends to have a wall dedicated to women and their achievements. “There is a definite gender-gap in pictures taken of women in historical archives but that does not mean we will stop hunting for their stories,” she says. The archival photo exhibit is on till September 10.
Published – August 22, 2026 10:39 pm IST
