Laura Bates: AI’s New Age of Sexism

Laura Bates warns in her new book that AI is ushering in a “new age of sexism,” amplifying misogyny through deepfakes, virtual companions, and gendered biases. She calls for urgent regulation to prevent technology from weaponizing ingrained biases and harming women globally.

Laura Bates has long been a sentinel against the insidious creep of sexism.

Her work with The Everyday Sexism Project stands as a global testament to the quiet, persistent injustices women face.

A decade after launching a platform that gave voice to countless experiences of invisible labor, casual dismissal, and gendered violence, Bates now confronts a new, far more pervasive threat: artificial intelligence.

Her new book, The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny, isn’t just a warning.

It is an urgent, firsthand dispatch from a future where the subjugation of women is being coded into the very fabric of our digital existence.

Bates’ journey into this unsettling frontier was deeply personal.

She became a victim of deepfake pornography herself, experiencing the cutting edge of a burgeoning form of abuse.

This abuse is as easy to create as it is devastating to endure.

What once required skilled manipulation now needs little more than a screengrab and an internet connection.

“Any person of any age who has access to the internet can now… make hugely realistic abusive, pornographic images of any woman or girl who they have screengrabbed a fully-clothed image of from the internet,” Bates tells WIRED.

She highlights how AI is “lowering the bar for access to this particular form of abuse very rapidly.”

The implications are already stark.

Cases are emerging from schools where children as young as 10 or 11 are using these tools to create explicit images of their classmates.

This is not just a widening of the net; it is a complete unraveling of privacy and safety.

However, deepfakes are merely one tendril of a larger, more complex web.

Bates’ investigations involved speaking with both tech creators and victims.

She even engaged with the very sexbots she critiques.

These efforts reveal a landscape where misogyny is not merely reflected but actively intensified by AI.

It is a pattern, she notes, that has long plagued new technologies, from the early internet to social media.

Each innovation, instead of being a neutral tool, quickly becomes encoded with the biases of its predominantly male creators.

It finds new, more potent ways to harass, abuse, and maintain patriarchal control.

AI, however, does not just regurgitate these existing abuses; it amplifies them, creating new forms of threats and control.

Perhaps most chilling is the rise of AI girlfriends and virtual companions.

Marketed by companies as tools to help men struggling with relationships or loneliness, Bates exposes this narrative as a “marketing whitewash.”

These digital constructs, customizable down to eye color and breast shape, are presented as eternally available, utterly submissive, and ready to engage in any sexual encounter, including extreme violence, without any semblance of consent.

The idea that such a dynamic could foster healthy relationship skills is not just absurd, it is dangerous.

It normalizes a profoundly misogynistic view of women as subservient objects, existing solely to flatter the male ego.

It offers no genuine solution to real-world issues of mental health or isolation.

Even seemingly innocuous virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa play a role in this techno-sexism.

Their anthropomorphized, often feminized voices, and the fact that an estimated 10 percent of interactions with them are abusive, subtly but powerfully reinforce the idea of women as subservient, administrative figures.

This constant, daily exposure, particularly for children, shapes perceptions and normalizes disrespectful interaction on a massive societal scale.

The reach of AI’s harm extends far beyond the digital screen.

Bates points to the environmental impact, noting that a single ChatGPT search consumes ten times the energy of a Google search.

Women, often on the frontlines of the global environmental crisis, are disproportionately affected.

This “progress,” she argues, often translates to astronomical profits for a few while the planet and its most vulnerable populations pay the price.

Furthermore, the women in the physical supply chain, from those mining materials to the underpaid and exploited data labelers, face layers of abuse that are conveniently glossed over by the shiny allure of new products.

It is easy, Bates acknowledges, for her concerns to be dismissed as the “pearl-clutching, nagging, uptight feminist” trope.

Yet, she counters, the very same warnings are being sounded by high-level figures embedded within the tech industry.

People like Jan Leike, who departed OpenAI over safety concerns, share similar worries.

The question, then, is not about the validity of the warnings, but “whether we’re prepared to listen.”

The path forward, while challenging, is clear: urgent, thoughtful regulation.

Bates decries the global reluctance, particularly from the US and UK, to implement safeguards.

She notes the hypocrisy of governments allowing unfettered development while claiming to care about safety.

The argument that tech is “too fast-moving” or “impossible to regulate” is, she asserts, a convenient excuse.

Companies making tens of billions in profit, with the brightest minds on their payroll, absolutely have the capacity to make their platforms safe; they are simply choosing not to.

This is not about being anti-tech or stifling innovation.

On the contrary, Bates argues, the potential for human benefit from AI is immense.

But that potential cannot be realized if the technology is allowed to spiral out of control.

It cannot be realized if it is weaponized by the ingrained biases of its creators and users, and left in the hands of a few powerful individuals who prioritize profit over people.

The time for a thoughtful dialogue about what “progress” truly means, and for whom, is now, before the new age of sexism becomes an inescapable reality.