UN expert urges AI safeguards against harms to women and girls

Claudia Flores urged governments on 8 October to build human-rights safeguards into AI systems from the outset, telling the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee that the technology reflects, reproduces and amplifies discrimination against women and girls. Flores, chair of the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, was presenting her report, according to a UN press account of the meeting. [1]

She called for firm limits on AI applications that facilitate gender-based violence, mass surveillance and threats to bodily autonomy, and for women and girls to have a say in decisions about the digital future. Flores said the digital divide was shutting women out of opportunities, particularly those living in poverty, in rural and Indigenous communities, and in conflict-affected areas. She also warned that digital violence and intimidation against women politicians, journalists and human rights defenders undermined democratic participation.

At the same meeting, Catarina Carvalho, UN-Women’s director of intergovernmental support, said digital technologies were creating new routes for trafficking and exploitation while protections and criminal-justice responses lagged. Luxembourg’s youth delegate, relaying a message from young people affected by deepfakes, said responsibility lay with those who create and distribute the content and the platforms that allow it to circulate. She warned that criminalising such abuse did not necessarily bring protection in practice. [1]