Even before deepfakes, tech was a tool of abuse and control

• Generative AI – technology used to create text, images and video – is already making image-based sexual abuse easier to perpetrate.
• But with the attention on AI and deepfakes, we cannot forget how less sophisticated technology can be used as a tool of abuse, with devastating consequences for victims.

Tech and control

• My work focused on the role of smartphones in the abuse of women who had fled controlling relationships.
• I found that perpetrators of domestic abuse were using technology to extend the reach of their power and control over their partners, a modern take on abuse tactics that were used long before smartphones were in every pocket.
• Mobile phones can be used directly to monitor and control, using GPS tracking or by bombarding a victim with texts, videos and voice calls.
• Gaslighting techniques such as this make victims question their own sanity which undermines their confidence in their own judgment.

A modern panopticon

• This gives perpetrators a power of omnipotence, leaving victims believing that they are being watched even when they are not.
• This brings to mind the work of the 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who introduced the concept of the “panopticon”.
• Bentham proposed a “perfect” prison system, where a guard tower sits in the centre, surrounded by individual cells.
• In this modern panopticon, victims can be out and about, visible to strangers, friends and family.