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AI incident ·

AI incident: sexual content (Dec 2024)

7 news reports Synced from source · record last edited 5 Sep 2026
On this page 9 sections

In brief

An AI system built by Synthetic video generation technology developers, Synthetic media generation technology developers and 2 others and deployed by Synthetic media creators and Deepfake creators allegedly harmed Women and girls, Victims of non-consensual deepfakes and 6 others.

Risk domain
Malicious Actors & Misuse Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
Occurred
Coverage
7 reportsDec 2024

What happened

A study by the American Sunlight Project is reported to have found that one in six Congresswomen were targeted by AI-generated nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) shared on deepfake websites. The study reports having found 35,000 mentions of explicit content involving 26 members of Congress, with 25 being women. Women were 70 times more likely than men to be victimized, according to the report.

Editor's notes

The American Sunlight Project study can be accessed here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6612cbdfd9a9ce56ef931004/t/67586997eaec5c6ae3bb5e24/1733847451191/ASP+DFP+Report.pdf.

Laws on record for this risk area

Policy angle: Classified under Malicious Actors & Misuse (Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 instruments on record cover this risk area.

Matched from the record's risk category and country to the instruments in effect recorded here: a law listed covers the area, which is not a finding that it applies to this incident. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (7)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

  1. 1 in 6 Congresswomen Targeted by AI-Generated Sexually Explicit Deepfakes – The Markup
    themarkup.org · Barbara Rodriguez, Jasmine Mithani
  2. Deepfake Pornography Targeting Members of Congress
    americansunlight.org · American Sunlight Project
  3. AI enters Congress: Sexually explicit deepfakes target women lawmakers
    19thnews.org · Barbara Rodriguez, Jasmine Mithani
  4. Dozens of lawmakers victims of sexually explicit deepfakes: Report
    thehill.com · Julia Shapero
  5. 1 in 6 Congresswomen Targeted by AI-Generated Sexually Explicit Deepfakes
    gizmodo.com · Barbara Rodriguez, Jasmine Mithani
  6. Women in congress are 70 times more likely to be victims of AI-generated deepfakes than male counterparts
    mashable.com · Chase DiBenedetto
  7. Women lawmakers 70 times more likely to be victims of deepfake porn, study finds
    usatoday.com · Saleen Martin

Who was involved

Alleged harmed party
Women and girls Victims of non-consensual deepfakes Victims of deepfake abuse Public figures Privacy Politicians in the United States Politicians Congresswomen

AI systems implicated

Synthetic video generation technologySynthetic media generation technologySynthetic image generation technologyDeepfake technology

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Causal entity
AI
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm level
—
Sectors
—
Countries
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Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.3.

  • IP/copyright loss

    "IP/copyright loss - Misuse or abuse of an individual or organisation’s intellectual property, including copyright, trademarks, and patents."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Cheating/plagiarism

    "Cheating/plagiarism - Use of another person’s or group’s words or ideas without consent and/or acknowledgement."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Defamation/libel/slander

    "Defamation/libel/slander - Use of a technology system to create, facilitate or amplify false perception(s) about an individual, group, or organisation."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Financial and business

    "Financial and Business - Use or misuse of a technology system in a manner that damages the financial interests of an individual or group, or which causes strategic, operational, legal or financial harm to a business or...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Impersonation/identity theft

    "Impersonation/identity theft - Theft of an individual, group or organisation’s identity by a third-party in order to defraud, mock or otherwise harm them."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Dehumanisation/objectification

    "Dehumanisation/objectification - Use or misuse of a technology system to depict and/or treat people as not human, less than human, or as objects."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Cybersecurity

    "LLMs may exacerbate cybersecurity risks in various ways (Newman, 2024). Firstly, LLMs may significantly amplify the effectiveness of deceptive operations aimed at tricking people into disclosing sensitive information or...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

  • Misinformation and Manipulation

    "Recent studies have demonstrated that LLMs can be exploited to craft deceptive narratives with levels of persuasiveness similar to human-generated content (Pan et al., 2023b; Spitale et al., 2023), to fabri- cate fake n...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Other incidents involving Synthetic media creators

Source record: incident #874 on the AI Incident Database · all 7 reports