India's Muslim Women Face AI-Generated Abuse: Report
AI-generated sexualised imagery targeting Muslim women in India is surging, with a study finding 6.7 million interactions across 297 public accounts as India's laws struggle to keep pace.
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The use of generative artificial intelligence to produce sexualised imagery and fabricated propaganda targeting Muslim women in India, according to an Al Jazeera report.
The trend extends a form of harassment rooted in the same communal logic that drove India's Sulli Deals and Bulli Bai controversies of 2021 and 2022, but now operates at a scale and speed that existing Indian law is structurally unequipped to address.
6.7 Million Interactions
The Washington, D.C.-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) analyzed 1,326 publicly available AI-generated images and videos from 297 public accounts on X, Facebook, and Instagram between May 2023 and May 2025.
Sexualised depictions of Muslim women generated more than 6.7 million interactions, the highest engagement of any category.
A recurring visual pattern ran through the dataset: a "Muslim-coded woman" paired with a "Hindu-coded man," with Muslim men depicted as violent or corrupt.
"Generative AI has made the transformation of sexual fantasy into imagery possible at speed and at no cost," said Zenith Khan, co-author of the CSOH study.
Since its founding in 2022, Mumbai-based helpline Meri Trustline has handled more than 482 cases, roughly 10% of which involve digitally manipulated material, a share that is rising.
"It Felt Like a Digital Lynching"
Al Jazeera spoke with Samreen Ayoub, 24, a freelance model from India-administered Kashmir, who discovered a fabricated video of herself circulating on Instagram.
The clip used photographs from her student years at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, stitched together with an AI-generated voiceover falsely claiming she was a Muslim woman "selling her body" to Hindu men.
More than a dozen accounts posted the video simultaneously; hundreds reshared it.
"It felt like a digital lynching," she told Al Jazeera. Her modeling work dried up for 4 to 5 months.
She reported the incident to New Delhi's police cybercrime unit. "Nothing happened," she said.
The Legal Gap: Fake Images, Real Harm
India's IT Act Section 66E covers non-consensual intimate imagery, but may not apply when no real body was recorded.
Digital platforms are afforded safe harbor protection as long as they remove illegal material upon notification, but many victims cannot even clear that threshold, Al Jazeera reported.
Zülal Merve Bulut
Zülal Merve Bulut is an international affairs reporter covering geopolitics, conflict, diplomacy, and human rights, focusing on the United States, the Middle East, and global politics. She reports on breaking news, analysis, and interviews to explain key international developments shaping today’s world. She is based in Istanbul.
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