None was real, but all three images were credible enough to unleash lust, vitriol - and even allegedly a murder, underlining the sophistication of generative artificial intelligence, and the threats it poses to women.Sex scandals of different Pakistani politicians (Male or female) are coming to surface ahead of General elections. Fake videos of former Prime Minister Imran Khan are in abundance on social media.
The two videos and the photo were deepfake, and went viral in a vibrant social mediascape that is struggling to come to grips with the technology that has the power to create convincing copies that can upend real lives.
"We need to address this as a community and with urgency before more of us are affected by such identity theft," actor Rashmika Mandanna said in a post on X, that has garnered more than 6.2 million views.
She is not the only Bollywood star to be cloned and attacked on social media, with top actors including Katrina Kaif, Alia Bhatt and Deepika Padukone also targeted with deepfakes.
The lycra video, said Mandanna, was "extremely scary not only for me, but also for each one of us who today is vulnerable to so much harm because of how technology is being misused". While digitally manipulated images and videos of women were once easy to spot, usually lurking in the dark corners of the internet, the explosion in generative AI tools such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E has made it easy and cheap to create and circulate convincing deepfakes.
More than 90% of deepfake videos online are pornographic, according to tech experts, and most are of women.
While there are no separate data for South Asian countries, digital rights experts say the issue is particularly challenging in conservative societies, where women have long been harassed online and abuse has gone largely unpunished
Google's YouTube and Meta Platforms - which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp - have updated their policies, requiring creators and advertisers to label all AI-generated content.
But the onus is largely on victims - usually girls and women - to take action, said Rumman Chowdhury, an AI expert at Harvard University who previously worked at reducing harms on Twitter.
"Generative AI will regrettably supercharge online harassment and malicious content ... and women are the canaries in the coal mine. They are the ones impacted first, the ones on whom the technologies are tested," she said.
"It is an indication to the rest of the world to pay attention, because it's coming for everyone," Chowdhury told a recent United Nations briefing.
As deepfakes have proliferated worldwide, there are growing concerns - and rising instances - of their use in harassment, scams and sextortion.
The US Executive Order on AI touches on dangers posed by deepfakes, while the European Union's proposed AI Act will require greater transparency and disclosure from providers.
Last month, 18 countries - including the United States and Britain - unveiled a non-binding agreement on keeping the wider public safe from AI misuse, including deepfakes.
Among Asian nations, China requires providers to use watermarks and report illegal deepfakes, while South Korea has made it illegal to distribute deepfakes that harm "public interest", with potential imprisonment or fines.
India is taking a tough stance as it drafts new rules.
IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said social media firms must remove deepfakes within 36 hours of receiving a notification, or risk losing their safe-harbour status that protects them from liability for third-party content.
But the focus should be on "mitigating and preventing incidents, rather than reactive responses", said Malavika Rajkumar at the advocacy group IT for Change.
While the Indian government has indicated it may force providers and platforms to disclose the identity of deepfake creators, "striking a balance between privacy protection and preventing abuse is key," Rajkumar added
Deepfakes of women and other vulnerable communities such as LGBTQ+ people - especially sexual images and videos - can be particularly dangerous in deeply religious or conservative societies, human rights activists say.
In Bangladesh, deepfake videos of female opposition politicians - Rumin Farhana in a bikini and Nipun Roy in a swimming pool - have emerged ahead of an election on January 7.
And last month, an 18-year-old woman was allegedly shot dead by her father and uncle in a so-called honour killing in Pakistan's remote Kohistan province, after a photograph of her with a man went viral. Police say the image was doctored.
Shahzadi Rai, a transgender member of Pakistan's Karachi Municipal Council, who has been the target of abusive trolling with deepfake images, has said they could exacerbate online gender-based violence and "seriously jeopardise" her career.
Even if audiences are able to distinguish between a real image and a deepfake, the woman's integrity is questioned, and her credibility may be damaged, said Nighat Dad, founder of the non-profit Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan.
"The threat to women's privacy and safety is deeply concerning," she said, particularly as disinformation campaigns gain steam ahead of an election scheduled for February 8.
"Deepfakes are creating an increasingly unsafe online environment for women, even non-public figures, and may discourage women from participating in politics and online spaces," she said.
In several countries including India, entrenched gender biases already affect the ability of girls and young women to use the internet, a recent report found.
Deepfakes of powerful Bollywood stars only underline the risk that AI poses to all women, said Rajkumar.
"Deepfakes have affected women and vulnerable communities for a long time; they have gained widespread attention only after popular actresses were targeted," she said.
The heightened focus now should push "platforms, policymakers, and society at large to create a safer and more inclusive online environment," she added.
Looking up the billowing petticoats of the princess dowager with a telescope, a courtier shouts out: “I see the road to Preferment, well fenc’d and water’d.” “There’s the road, thro bushy park,” says another looking upwards, the pun alluding to the royal park at Bushey and to the genitals of the mother of King George III. “I love power,” princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg cries out, as she rides a broomstick. “Let us make the most of this,” responds her court favourite, the prime minister and third earl of Bute, John Stuart. “We are above the vulgar.”
For politicians in Pakistan, the world of eighteenth-century English popular politics might seem strangely familiar. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan has claimed the government’s plotting to defame him with fake gandi-gandi videos. The elderly Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Pervaiz Rashid was targeted through a purportedly leaked video in which the party vice-president is seen recording online sex. And the senator Azam Khan Swati has revealed he was blackmailed with a secretly-filmed explicit video.
Lewd, unashamedly sexist and politically incendiary, the pamphlet about the princess, now housed in the British Museum, was part of a war against the court being waged by the radical—and unscrupulous—politician John Wilkes. Lord Bute had been hand-picked by the crown to end the power of landed oligarchs—and Wilkes hit back with a savage campaign of sexual rumour and innuendo.
Tempting as it is to see the leaked videos as just one more element in the no-holds-barred power struggle among Pakistan’s political élite, the sexual scandals have special significance—just as it had in the time of George III. In regimes built around theological claims, morals have a special place in securing leadership legitimacy. Like armoured vehicles and Kalashnikovs, shame is a weapon.
“Gossip is like a water,” Salman Rushdie wrote in his stellar novel on Pakistan. “It probes surfaces for their weak places, until it finds the breakthrough point.”
Lieutenant-General Amir Khan Niazi, the commission claimed, was on “intimate terms with one Mrs. Saeeda Bukhari of Gulberg, Lahore, who was running a brothel under the name of Senorita Home, and was also acting as the General’s tout for receiving bribes.” The General was also said to be “friendly with another woman called Shamini Firdaus of Sialkot.” “He came to acquire a stinking reputation owing to his association with women of bad repute.”
Aqleem Akhtar—a former police officer’s wife, and mother of six who became a Lahore high-society madame—was blamed for the alcohol-fuelled debaucheries of chief martial law administrator General Yahya Khan. The General’s lifestyle, the argument went, led on to the catastrophe of 1971.