TIPPING POINT: ONLINE VIOLENCE IMPACTS, MANIFESTATIONS AND REDRESS IN THE AI AGE
Source: UN Women
Introduction
Targeted online violence against women in public life is increasingly technologically sophisticated and damaging, triggering alarming rates of mental health diagnosis, heightened self-censorship, and more frequent escalation to law enforcement. For women human rights defenders and activists, journalists and media workers, and writers and other public communicators, online violence is often deliberate and coordinated, aiming to silence them while undermining their professional credibility and personal reputations. It also serves to fuel the reversal of hard-won rights in a climate of rising authoritarianism, democratic backsliding and networked misogyny. Gender rights rollback is both enabled and exacerbated by technologies which — by design — amplify misogynistic hate speech for profit.
Generative AI apps are the latest manifestation of this form of subjugation. They do not just ‘nudify’ women and girls instantaneously without their consent, they simulate them being sexually assaulted. AI-assisted ‘virtual rape’ is now at the fingertips of perpetrators. This phenomenon deepens and accelerates the harm inflicted on women in public life who are increasingly targeted in online violence campaigns with an escalation in associated offline attacks, abuse and harassment, as our previous research has shown. In this publication — the second installment in the Tipping Point series that examines how online violence is constraining women’s participation in public life in the AI Age — we focus primarily on manifestations of image-based abuse and what happens after exposure to such online violence. How are survivors affected personally and professionally? What coping mechanisms do they deploy? And how do they seek legal redress? Our data is derived from a UN-Women commissioned global survey which was distributed in late 2025 in five languages, in partnership with UNESCO and the International Center for Journalists.
Introduction
Targeted online violence against women in public life is increasingly technologically sophisticated and damaging, triggering alarming rates of mental health diagnosis, heightened self-censorship, and more frequent escalation to law enforcement. For women human rights defenders and activists, journalists and media workers, and writers and other public communicators, online violence is often deliberate and coordinated, aiming to silence them while undermining their professional credibility and personal reputations. It also serves to fuel the reversal of hard-won rights in a climate of rising authoritarianism, democratic backsliding and networked misogyny. Gender rights rollback is both enabled and exacerbated by technologies which — by design — amplify misogynistic hate speech for profit.
Generative AI apps are the latest manifestation of this form of subjugation. They do not just ‘nudify’ women and girls instantaneously without their consent, they simulate them being sexually assaulted. AI-assisted ‘virtual rape’ is now at the fingertips of perpetrators. This phenomenon deepens and accelerates the harm inflicted on women in public life who are increasingly targeted in online violence campaigns with an escalation in associated offline attacks, abuse and harassment, as our previous research has shown. In this publication — the second installment in the Tipping Point series that examines how online violence is constraining women’s participation in public life in the AI Age — we focus primarily on manifestations of image-based abuse and what happens after exposure to such online violence. How are survivors affected personally and professionally? What coping mechanisms do they deploy? And how do they seek legal redress? Our data is derived from a UN-Women commissioned global survey which was distributed in late 2025 in five languages, in partnership with UNESCO and the International Center for Journalists.