'Fake nudes' put teen girls at risk

AI is making life even worse for teen girls

Trigger warning: Sexual harassment and suicide

What you probably already know: It’s the wild west out there for Artificial Intelligence. While there are, of course, some very positive uses of the technology, we are quickly seeing some of the downsides, too. For teen girls, things just got a lot worse.

Why? Social media has already taken its toll on young girls and women. Eating disorders and suicide are on the rise across the globe, and really started to take off after social media became more prevalent. Among girls, 30% said they had seriously considered suicide, a jump of 60% in a decade and double the rate of boys. But now there’s a new twist: AI is being used to create fake nude pictures of girls, which are then disseminated on social media and in private chats.

What it means: It doesn’t matter if the other kids know the photos are fake. For the girls depicted in the images, it’s a humiliating and horrifying experience, according to high schoolers interviewed for a Wall Street Journal story. Often, parents don’t know their children are being subjected to this kind of bullying and online harassment, and these issues aren’t reported.

What happens now: I was recently on vacation with a friend who is a high school teacher, and while we were there, one of her female students committed suicide. She was the second girl that year who had committed suicide in their small, Maine school. My friend, who was absolutely devastated, said she never would have expected this girl was at risk. It was a stark reminder of just how quickly this kind of harassment can turn deadly, and how important it will be to rein in these kinds of uses for AI before children get hurt.