In 2024, over one hundred million AI girlfriend apps were downloaded by users around the world. According to DCU professor Debbie GIng, this and other emerging technology should be “a serious cause of concern”.
Speaking at a live event to mark International Women’s Day – hosted by the Irish Times Women’s Podcast – Ging described how these apps can alter men’s attitudes towards women and girls in real life.
“There’s this argument that it’s about teaching boys how to develop relationships. But what they’re doing is basically abusing them and testing how far they can go with verbal abuse and other kinds of things. They [AI girlfriends] never say no”.
The fact that AI girlfriends will tolerate all kinds of abuse, Ging explained, is a “coding decision”, made in a tech industry that is mostly being “built by men”.
But it’s not just AI relationship apps that the professor of digital media and gender says should be of concern. “Women’s subjugation” is being “baked in” to much of the new technology.
“Even worse, something I found out about recently is another app, where you can talk to chatbots and roleplay violent and illegal acts. You can access brothels staffed by girls under fifteen years old.” The tagline ‘a world without feminism’, she pointed out, is attached to one online brother.
Also speaking on the panel alongside Ging, was international human rights lawyer Caoilfhionn Gallagher, who spoke about the many ways technology is being used to abuse, harass and threaten some of the women she represents in her legal profession.
“One of my clients had pornographic images generated of her, which were then sent to her son’s school,” she told the audience. “That’s a message saying, ‘I know where your son goes to school’, and it’s presenting something which is utterly demeaning of her and then it’s impacting on her real life”.
Gallagher also described the work she does with a charity called Expat International, “which is a brilliant organisation for children who’ve been victims of abuse in places around the world”. This abuse is streamed online and is “directed by western men, including Irish men”.
“So what happens is you have a child in the Philippines or a child in Uganda, for example, and through the dark web, you have someone logging in and then directing what should be done to that child in real time and watching the images”.
“I think that example just shows us how… these difficulties are arising across borders and in new ways, and children and women are at risk in new ways, and our systems are creaking at the seams and struggling to keep up.”
So what can be done to keep women and girls safe in digital spaces? At the event, hosted by podcast presenter Róisín Ingle, the panel – which also included Orla Hanratty, a 5th year student from Clonmel, in Tipperary – spoke about the different solutions available to tackle the issue.
“This sense of it all being too overwhelming is what the technology industry wants,” said Ging, who remains hopeful that online platforms can be made safer for women.
“They [the tech industry] want us to feel despair, confusion, polarisation and conflict. So we have to keep resisting that. We have to keep lobbying the government to regulate big tech”.
Following the discussion, Ingle was joined on stage by singer songwriter Róisín O, who performed her new single Magic. It was written as a tribute to her mother Mary Black and was released last Friday.
You can listen back to the live show in full – recorded at Chapters Bookstore in Dublin – in the player above or search The Women’s Podcast in your usual podcast app.