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A photo on Instagram with more reactions than normal and a message from a follower I didn’t know: “They took your clothes off with artificial intelligence (AI) and it’s everywhere.” After that, two emotions bubbled up: shame and anger. Johanna Villalobos, a Costa Rican journalist and network content creator, had been talking on her podcast for months about the dangers of generative artificial intelligence and how it was “another weapon against women,” but she never thought she would be a victim of it would be. “I spent a week not leaving my house; I felt like everyone was looking at me because they knew. I felt a shame that wasn’t mine. It’s not my body, but it’s hyperrealistic,” he says from his home in San Jose. But the worst came later: “Who do I report if there’s no way to know who did it and there are no laws?” “I’m alone.”
The only way out the 30-year-old found was to tell it on social networks and explain that it was not her real body. “I was a victim of a misogynistic attack on the internet, fake porn or fake porn […]. I was scared for days, scared for my career, I felt ashamed and humiliated for something that wasn’t even my fault,” she explained in a video. But the result was merely cathartic. Although days later more than a hundred women in Costa Rica, Mexico and Colombia, among others, complained about similar situations, the complaints have no place in court.
Villalobos will show the content he creates for social networks on October 15 in San Jose. Carlos Herrera
Mexico is one of the countries most concerned with violence against women online and has a comprehensive package of federal and state reforms to sanction these practices, known as the Olympia Law. But AI and the difficult traceability of the author keep this behavior in the dark area. Argentina, inspired by Mexican regulations and with a current Olympic law, is one of the countries in the region closest to change. The Belén Law project is currently being discussed. The text would make it possible to punish the procurement, extortion and non-consensual distribution of intimate material or material depicting sexual violence or deep fake porn practices. Colombia now has one of the least guaranteeing legislations on the continent in this matter. Like Nicaragua and Venezuela, gender-based online violence is not enshrined in any legal framework. In Chile the focus of the measures is exclusively on minors.
Attempts to typify it and raise awareness of it are arriving late in the countries where it is at least arriving. “We are heading for a Me Too of this type of crime,” predicts Cecilia Celeste Danesi, researcher and author of “The Empire of Algorithms.” “There is a very strong activism movement in Latin America because I believe that society has not yet understood the dimension of this tool for women, girls and youth.” According to a study by Home Security Heros, which examined almost 96,000 videos created with generative AI 98% of them are pornographic and it takes no more than 25 minutes to create a hyper-realistic one-minute video. 74% of content creators say they have no regrets.
This question has been bothering Villalobos for months. “I don’t understand what’s in it for the person who did it. Not even if he is aware of the damage he has caused me,” explains the young woman. However, on the networks, the comments reflect machismo and the objectification of women on the continent. “Everyone told me that it was a strategy of mine to make more money or become famous. “Who would have thought that this would be of any use to me?” he criticizes. “I asked every person who spoke to me about the case, ‘Have you seen it?’ It is terrible that I have to do with this and not with my work.” That is why, for Danesi, awareness, regulation and, above all, education and public policy are the key to understanding “the dimension” of the scenario that is beginning to emerge.
Students demonstrate in Mexico City on October 16 against the aggression of a classmate who used AI to alter images to show them naked. Nadya Murillo
A television presenter in Costa Rica, the singer Rosalía, the students of the College of Commerce and Administration in Mexico City, the Mexican lawmaker whose fake photos ended up on Only Fans… Currently, no woman has the means to protect herself from cybernetic attacks and is 99% directed against them. To us.
For Danesi there are two options for regulation. The first is to follow European standards that impose transparency requirements on applications – such as introducing watermarks on fictional content – and restrict social networks. “That’s where they spread virally and cause the most pain in women,” she adds. The second option is to protect these rights collaterally. “We need to talk about how we can limit every broadcasting platform.” That means finding tools that detect fictional content and use algorithms so that it doesn’t spread like wildfire and not the other way around, as is the case with women. Also to Villalobos. The first screenshot he received as evidence was the image of two WhatsApp and Telegram groups, each with around 1,800 users. Then dozens of calls it had seen on other networks. Until he stopped asking. “I just want to forget about it,” he says.
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And one more suggestion at the end:
Archive images by Abigail Mejía. Courtesy of the Dominican Republic Ministry of Women’s Affairs
💜 🇩🇴 A woman whose memory was just saved:
Today we would like to use this space to pay tribute to Abigail Mejía (1895-1941), one of those pioneers who paved the way for the rights of others, but whose name was not so well known at the time because of her gender. In addition to being among the women who were ahead of their time and who excelled in various fields, from writing to photography to education, Abigail Mejía headed the National Museum. She also founded two feminist organizations, Club Nosotras and Acción Feminista Dominica, whose aim was education and training women, especially the poorest in the country. In 1931 she wrote her first feminist manifesto, in which she called for equality between men and women and demanded the right to vote for women. In addition, in various writings published in the press, she denounced sexism in Dominican society. Mejía died in 1941, a year before Dominican women were allowed to vote.
On September 28, his remains were transferred to the homeland’s pantheon in a ceremony attended by President Luis Abinader. For the Minister of Women, Mayra Jiménez, this is “another step towards recognizing the contribution of women to the construction of the Republic and an invitation to further engage with history from a perspective of equality and gender equality that “removes the exceptional Dominican.” Women from anonymity.” With Mejía, seven women are now recognized in the Dominican National Pantheon.
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