The Dark Side of AI
As artificial intelligence tools become easier to access, they are also being increasingly misused to open the door for safety concerns, especially when it comes to the sexual exploitation and trafficking of girls and women.
Generative AI can create new images, audio, and video based on user prompts. But while this new technology offers easy to use graphic design and video making tools, it is also introducing greater risks for the sexual exploitation of real people. AI can be misused to sexually exploit women and children, including altering images that depict people as nude (when in an original photo they were not) or in creating sexually explicit videos that never happened.
Not only can AI be used to create false graphics and videos, but it’s also being used by traffickers to groom future victims on social media and in online chats.
Rather than communicating with potential victims individually like they have in years past, traffickers can now also deploy AI chatbots to help them groom vulnerable people and manipulate human emotions. These bots can hold dozens of highly personalized conversations simultaneously. They adapt quickly to emotional cues and can build rapid trust and rapport with people on the other side of the chat.
AI is also giving traffickers the ability to target potential victims by scanning thousands of social media accounts to gain insight into people’s vulnerabilities and develop exploitation strategies that are specifically tailored to each person’s particular weaknesses. Increasingly, AI can determine the most efficient manipulation tactics to use with each person. This can empower human traffickers to be able to use AI to identify, groom, manipulate, and begin to exploit victims at a much larger scale than in previous years.
Addressing this growing problem is going to require action from technology companies, lawmakers, schools, families, and churches in order to help teach and reinforce the importance of online safety, especially for women and children. Some of the first steps to take can be:
Limiting personal information and images that are shared publicly
Using strong and unique passwords with multi-factor authentication
Tightening all privacy settings on social media accounts
Treating unexpected messages, requests for images, gifts, threats, or invitations to move a conversation to a private platform as warning signs.
If someone is threatening to share AI created intimate videos or images of you online without your consent, RAINN has developed a national sexual assault hotline, and they recommend some steps you can take to save the evidence, report the exploitative content to the platform, and protect your social media accounts and devices.