AI-fueled online gender violence surges, causing women journalists to face offline harm

Artificial intelligence has drastically escalated online gender-based violence, silencing women journalists and activists worldwide, a group of women journalists said on a panel at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia.

The discussion spotlighted how AI tools have turned targeted harassment into a realistic threat. Once text-based abuse and crude memes have evolved into AI-generated sexualized deepfakes to push women out of public life.

Nobel Peace Prize laurate Maria Ressa, the co-founder and CEO of Rappler in the Philippines, said in the talk that she received thousands of hate messages, malicious memes and AI deepfakes.

“These are not personal attacks, they are information operations to silence women,” Ressa said.  “Platforms fail to act because they label public figures as targeted persons, while AI makes abuse faster and more harmful.”

A 2025 UN Women survey found that 42% of women journalists have suffered offline harm linked to online violence, up from 20% in UNESCO’s 2020 The Chilling report, marking a 22% increase in five years.

Julie Posetti, director of the Information Integrity Initiative, a digital forensics lab set up by Ressa, said online violence is nothing virtual. It’s an act of violence that's part of a cycle of escalating harm.

“We have found that 41% of the women surveyed had experienced offline attacks, abuse or harassment that they believed had been received through online attacks,” she said.

Kalliopi Mingeirou, the Chief at the Ending Violence Against Women section of UN-Women, said in the talk that global backlash against gender equality exacerbates the crisis.

“Over 50% of countries lack strong legal protections for women, and fewer than 40% cover digital gender violence,” she said. “Funding cuts for women’s rights groups and algorithmic amplification of misogynistic content create a ‘toxic cycle’ linking online abuse to radicalization and offline harm.”

“It is necessary to have cross-border regulation of the misuse of artificial intelligence tools, strategic litigation against harmful content on platforms, and the establishment of community support networks for victimized women,” Posetti said.

“It is a turning point in 2026, news organizations must be united and the whole society needs to make an effort,” Ressa said.

Fatima Hashem Morales, a media development practitioner who attended the talk, said she was targeted on Facebook.

“Because of a post I wrote. I was condemning a massacre that happened in my country Syria and my ex-friend attacked me on that,” she said.

“After that incident, I was less likely to share my opinion. I just want to focus on my work and don’t want to be consumed by negativity,” she added.

Nabeelah Shabbir, a British Pakistani journalist and researcher who also attended the talk, said she is trying to understand how attacks against women happen and who is behind them. By understanding this information, she can hold the relevant authorities accountable and share it with women's communities to spark discussion and prevent it from being ignored.

“We're trying to work on both levels, as much support as we can for the journalists themselves, and also work on data and understand the data in order to be shared with research places, think tanks, and policymakers,” she said.

Luana, a journalism student from Vienna who did not provide her last name, said it comes down to how politics redefines this kind of violence.

“People need to realize that the internet is not above the law, and that what happens in the digital space does not mean it has no impact on individuals,” she said.