‘Looked so real’: How AI is being weaponised against India’s Muslim women
Experts say a trend is reshaping online harassment: the use of AI to generate sexualised imagery and propaganda targeting Muslim women. New Delhi, India
Experts say a trend is reshaping online harassment: the use of AI to generate sexualised imagery and propaganda targeting Muslim women. New Delhi, India – When Samreen Ayoub first saw the video, she was stunned. The freelance model from India-administered Kashmir was scrolling on her phone last year when a friend sent her a clip circulating on Instagram. The video appeared to tell the story of her life in New Delhi, complete with a narrator’s voice, scrolling captions and headlines like a television news segment. But it was entirely fabricated. “It was proper stalking,” Ayoub, 24, said. “They had followed my life from my first semester to the last at the university.” The video stitched together photographs from Ayoub’s time as a student at New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University – images drawn from everyday moments of campus life, including group projects, farewell gatherings and selfies with classmates. The voiceover, generated using artificial intelligence, falsely claimed she was a Muslim woman “selling her body” to Hindu men. It misidentified people in the photographs and labelled her own brother as her “pimp”. “It looked so real that if someone, even my parents, saw the video, they would think it was real,” Ayoub said. She is one of several Muslim women who have experienced what researchers described as a pattern that is becoming increasingly visible: the use of AI to generate sexualised imagery and propaganda. Al Jazeera reached out to several Muslim women who have been targeted. They declined to speak on the record, citing shame and the risk of retraumatisation. ‘Sexual fantasy into imagery’ The trend to sexualise images and videos of Muslim women is unfolding alongside India’s growing engagement in global conversations on AI governance, including a high-level AI Impact Summit held earlier this year in New Delhi that focused on innovation and regulatory frameworks. A study by the Washington, DC-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) analysed 1,326 publicly available AI-generated images and videos collected from 297 public accounts on X, Facebook and Instagram from May 2023 to May 2025. The researchers found that sexualised depictions of Muslim women generated the highest engagement – more than 6.7 million interactions across the platforms. “Generative AI has made the transformation of sexual fantasy into imagery possible at speed and at no cost,” said Zenith Khan, coauthor of the study and a digital research analyst at the CSOH. “Image generators and deepfakes allow individuals to convert hostile narratives into highly realistic visual material with minimal technical expertise.” Researchers are not the only people tracking the trend. Meri Trustline, an online safety helpline run by the Mumbai-based RATI Foundation, has also seen a growing volume of such cases.
The BriefWire