Deepfakes & AI-Generated Image Abuse

A face can now be lifted from a wedding photograph and placed into a video that never happened, by anyone with a phone and a free model. In the last two years we have seen morphed images used to break off marriages, to extort money from students, and to silence women who spoke up at work. The most common reaction is the most damaging one: delete everything and hope it disappears. It does not disappear, and deleting destroys the evidence that would have proved the image was fabricated in the first place.

The first hour matters more than the first month. We preserve before we protest — full-page screenshots with the URL and timestamp visible, the profile handle, and where possible the file itself with its metadata intact. A written grievance then goes to the platform's Grievance Officer, who is bound by Rule 3(2)(b) of the IT Rules to remove non-consensual sexual imagery, including artificially generated imagery, within twenty-four hours. In parallel we file the complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and at the local cyber cell, and where the woman does not want her name in a public record we press for the protections available to her identity. Where the image is used to demand money or compliance, extortion is charged alongside the IT Act offences, which changes the seriousness of the file entirely.

Removal is usually achievable in days rather than months when the notice is drafted correctly and cites the rule. Beyond takedown, the record you build supports a criminal complaint, a civil claim in damages, and — where an employer, college or spouse acted on the fake — an answer to the consequence that followed. No woman should have to prove a video of herself is false; the law puts the burden where it belongs.