Digital violence in times of AI, another threat to women?

Nowadays anyone can create a hyper-realistic porn video with artificial intelligence (AI). You only need the photo of anyone, an email and between 10 and 50 dollars. These are the requirements of the 96 already existing applications to "get convincing deep nudes" unlimited for one year. "It will be a piece of cake to add someone to a porn scene," says one of the best-known apps on its website, with 1.5 million monthly visits. "It's the best of the best because of how easy and powerful it is," describes another. It is precisely this facility to generate content without consent and disseminate it that worries experts in the region, where digital gender violence is barely becoming a crime in several Latin American countries and where the commitment to the prevention of these behaviors is even more volatile.

The perverse use of social networks and virtuality opened more than a decade ago the debate of whether or not to typify these behaviors that mainly affect women; since, in countries like Mexico, they respond to 89% of the victims. Generative artificial intelligence has reopened the discussion: Is turning the abusive use of intimate images into a crime the solution? For María Camila Correa Flórez, professor of Criminal Law at the Faculty of Jurisprudence of the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, it is only a small part: "We need comprehensive public policies that prevent, not just punish. Criminal law can intervene to a point: so that people understand that it is a crime. Still, it's a good first step."

Colombia, however, has one of the least guaranteed laws in the continent in this area. Along with Nicaragua and Venezuela, online gender-based violence is not covered by any legal framework. The production or distribution of sexual images without consent is not a crime although some criminal figures - extortion or computer or hate crime - can be used to punish these behaviors in exceptional cases.

In Argentina and Chile, on the other hand, there is a more protectionist legal framework with children and adolescents, but there is a huge gap in the defense of the rights of adult women. Brazil has criminalized the non-consensual distribution of intimate images since 2018 and Peru also incorporated online sexual harassment and blackmail into its Penal Code. Mexico has been one of the countries most concerned with violence against women online and has a large package of federal and state reforms to sanction these practices, known as the Olimpia Law, in honor of Olimpia Coral Melo, victim in 2014 of the unauthorized dissemination of a video of sexual content.

However, despite pioneering legislation in Mexico, this crime remains elusive. "You can have laws and elements, but the materialization of the sentence is the most difficult," Elvia Karina Ramírez Juárez, a Mexican trial lawyer, says by video call. "It sounds very nice on paper, but getting these videos taken down from the network is very unlikely. The gap between paper and reality is very long." Julio César Bonilla Gutiérrez, Citizen Commissioner of the Institute of Transparency of Mexico City recognizes that "there is still a long way to go": "Although the legislation represents an advance, to better confront cyberbullying, the reforms have to improve a lot. The danger of doing nothing is that digital violence often becomes physical."

Women who do not report

With or without penalization, to date, very few cases of online gender-based violence have been resolved by courts in the region. The lack of jurisprudence is a consequence of bureaucracy in complaint mechanisms, fear of revictimization and feelings of shame and distrust in the judicial authorities and the lack of technical knowledge of these. "The obstacles to prosecuting violence against women on and offline are the same: women still do not report because they are not believed or continue to think that it is an issue of the couple's privacy," explains Luz Patricia Mejía, Technical Secretary of the Follow-up Mechanism of the Convention of Belém do Pará. "The only thing different is that technology goes too fast."

Public policies, criminal sanctions and conversations with the big platforms. These are some of the premises proposed by Mejía to regulate artificial intelligence in terms of gender. "We have to be prepared for debates that have never happened, such as that freedom of expression, which is the pillar of democracy, cannot remain untouchable. We are moving towards the transition of a new world that forces us to rethink these models." He adds: "States have a more limited capacity than Twitter and Meta to really regulate. Applications should be engaged globally. There is no other way."

Cecilia Celeste Danesi, UPSA researcher and author of The Empire of Algorithms suggests that regulation is closer to information than to prohibition: "The proposals being promoted by the European Union and the United States go through putting a waterseal that informs that the content generated is false; This also ties in with consumers' right to be informed." He adds: "AI could even be part of the solution if it is used to find this content."

For Katya Vera Morales, expert officer on gender of the Cybersecurity Program of the Organization of American States (OAS), it is necessary to put victims at the center of policies: "Many of them do not want to report and go through the whole process of revictimization that this usually entails. Sometimes, they just want their photos to stop being distributed, the removal of the contents, to stop sextortioning them... We have to ask ourselves, what does access to justice mean for victims? And, from the answers we get, design a course of action."

Complaints in networks

Although the judicial complaints do not yet include this threat, dozens of women have criticized on social networks having been victims of generative AI. "The law [Olympia] should be made to compensate and take care of the victims. And it's not doing that. They have to go after the servers. It's true that stopping the flow doesn't stop the damage, but it limits it," Eri Gutierrez, content creator and technology specialist, explains over the phone. "The data generated in the applications stays on the servers and these are increasingly perfecting the technique so that the 'user' has a wider repertoire. You see horrible things on the deepweb..."

"It's incredibly easy to create the most attractive girls with just a few words... and they will do what you command. Go crazy!" A forum that compares "fake porn" apps gives a very high score to an application that creates sexy avatars of women, with photos provided by the user. The only 'but' is that so that the images you produce are not blurry "you have to subscribe". This one costs less than $10. Ramírez, a Mexican litigator, believes that the key to these cases is to demonstrate responsibility: "And this enormous debate is only being held by analysts, not politicians. In Mexico there has never been a restriction on apps or social networks. And honestly, I don't see it as close."

Our recommendations of the week:

• Erika Aponte, a victim of femicide on Mother's Day, had already asked for protection from violence from her ex-partner. The 26-year-old Colombian woman fled in April from the place where she lived with Christian Rincón, a man who abused her for several years, and whom she reported to the authorities a few days before he murdered her.
• Francia Márquez makes leadership in Africa rethink. The Colombian vice president drinks from many concepts of Pan-Africanism, but questions African governments. Many of them are authoritarian, masculine and aged.
• Roxana Ruiz: "The price for not letting yourself be raped and killed in Mexico is going to jail." The 23-year-old woman has been sentenced to six years in prison for murdering her rapist in self-defense.
• Diana Flores, billet flag champion: "For other girls to see me and say they want to play in the NFL is my great victory." With only 25 years he won the World Cup with the Mexican national team in 2022 and starred in the Super Bowl halftime ad. The athlete now fights to open the way for other players
• A refuge to return to life after years imprisoned by obstetric emergencies in El Salvador. The house of Mujeres Libres offers a second chance to Salvadoran women who ended up in jail accused of homicide. Upon leaving, they have a criminal record and must face stigma
• 'The brave women': the sound story in Triqui of the weavers of San Martín Itunyoso against the sale of women in Oaxaca. The podcast is the first production of the Spotify platform in Mexico made in Triqui and in Spanish in which its creator seeks to contribute to change the situation in her community

And a suggestion to finish:

👩🏻 💼A woman to follow: Raquel Bernal

Raquel Bernal, rector of the Universidad de los Andes.Santiago Mesa

By Lorena Arroyo

Raquel Bernal is the first rector of the Universidad de los Andes, one of the most important in Colombia. As she herself said in a recent speech during the 2023 graduation ceremony, it is after 75 years of history and 23 men who have passed through that position. According to herself, if she got it it was because her parents did a "good job" of empowering her since she was little. And so she grew up believing that anything was possible: she graduated in Economics from the Universidad de los Andes and received her doctorate from New York University. But he acknowledged in that speech, reaching that position has not been easy and neither has being a leader in an environment that is still very masculine.

I recommend you watch the full speech on Youtube. In it, she shows what gender inequality looks like in Latin America and encourages her students to seek equality for all. But, above all, he makes a powerful plea for a different way of leadership in the face of the challenges he has experienced in his position. Here is that excerpt from the speech:

"Sometimes, I confess, I feel the need to suppress myself in order to fit into this role. Even other women sometimes tell me that I should be more vehement and that I should not accept mistakes because that makes me look weak. It has taken me time to understand that if I do, no one wins. I think everyone benefits from different and even complementary leadership styles. Interestingly, I don't think all men prefer a stronger organizational style. Where mistakes are not accepted and excessively assertive conversation is always preferable to active listening. I have been told by colleagues of mine that it is sometimes exhausting for them too. Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court said, "We must not confuse kindness with lack of character." That means that when women exercise leadership from who we are and feel, we change the work environment in ways that are also beneficial to men."

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