New Report on AI Chatbots and Violence Against Women

My new report Invisible No More: How AI Chatbots are Reshaping Violence Against Women and Girls provides the first comprehensive analysis of how AI chatbots are implicated in violence against women and girls (VAWG), and identifies significant gaps in law, regulation and platform governance. Read the Research Briefing summarising key findings.

The report makes visible the very real harms and threats to the freedom and safety of women and girls, and shows for the first time the range of platform design choices and policies that enable, encourage and normalise VAWG. 

Launched in the House of Lords on 23 March 2026 by Baroness Rosie Boycott, founder of the AI and Misogyny Network, the project was funded by the Government’s UK Research and Innovation funds and is co-authored by Clare McGlynn, Yvonne McDermott, Stuart Macdonald, Rüya Tuna Toparlak, Fabienne Tarrant and Samantha Treacy. 

The report develops a new typology to better understand, and then prevent and redress, the varying forms of chatbot-VAWG, namely:

• chatbot-driven VAWG - the chatbot initiates and perpetrates abuse; a new form of VAWG only existing due to the development of AI technology

• Chatbot-enabled VAWG - the chatbot assists users to commit abuse Chatbot-enabled VAWG such as detailed guidance on stalking

• Chatbot-simulated VAWG – the chatbot co-produces abusive roleplays such as simulations of rape, incest or child sexual abuse. 

• Chatbot-normalising VAWG – the chatbot normalises and legitimises VAWG

  
  

Key findings and recommendations: 

⏹ AI Chatbots are Creating New and Heightened Forms of VAWG

⏹ VAWG is Largely Invisible in AI Chatbot Research

⏹ Chatbot design and governance choices enable VAWG

⏹ Few Restrictions on Chatbot Roleplays of Incest, Child Sexual Abuse and Rape

⏹ New Criminal Law Offence of Dangerous Deployment of an AI Chatbot recommended

⏹ Reforms Required to Online Safety Act, Consumer Protection Act, together with new Online Safety Commission

The report warns that chatbot-related VAWG represents a rapidly escalating threat. Without early intervention, these harms risk becoming entrenched and scaling quickly - mirroring the trajectory of other forms of technology-facilitated abuse such as deepfake and “nudify” tech, where early warnings were largely ignored.

Further information:

Read the full report Invisible No More here.

Read the Research Briefing summarising key findings here.