A Spanish women’s rights campaigner who became the target of AI-manufactured nude images has urged tougher online rules, pressing authorities to end the near-anonymity she says enables repeated digital assaults. According to recent reporting, she wants platforms required to link accounts to identifiable individuals so perpetrators cannot act with impunity. [2],[4]

Madrid is preparing a suite of measures that go beyond fines and takedown orders, including a proposed ban on under-16s using social media and the prospect of criminal liability for executives who fail to remove illegal or hateful material. The moves form part of a wider European turn towards stricter controls on large U.S. tech firms. [5],[2]

The activist, who combines legal training with a high public profile, said the scale of online abuse had forced governments to act only after the problem became impossible to ignore. “Social media isn’t new – and the violence is brutal, systematic, 24/7,” she told Reuters, and she recounted an encounter with law enforcement that left her frustrated after being told her case did not amount to a crime. “What hit me hardest wasn’t the deepfake, it was going to the police and being told it wasn’t even a crime.” Similar episodes, including investigations into AI-driven images of minors and prosecutions of young offenders, have exposed gaps in the law and enforcement. [3],[6]

She rejected a blanket age-based cut-off for social media as insufficient, describing proposals to bar children as “paternalistic” and arguing protections must extend to all users. Campaign groups and surveys have documented widespread harm: one study found large numbers of young people in Spain have been subject to AI-generated sexual imagery without consent. [4],[2]

While defending the right to use pseudonyms online, she said platforms should be required to hold verifiable identity information behind profiles: “Call yourself ‘PeppaPig88’ if you want – fine. But there has to be a real identity behind that account,” she said. As an alternative to small fines, she proposed stronger market sanctions against platforms that repeatedly fail to curb abuse, up to exclusion from major markets. Recent criminal probes into major social networks over alleged failures to prevent sexualised deepfakes of children have added urgency to such proposals. [7],[5]

Advocates and policymakers point to a string of domestic cases that illustrate how AI tools have expanded avenues for harassment, from sharing manipulated images of teenagers to orchestrated campaigns of hate. Save the Children and other organisations have called for clearer statutes, compulsory digital education and stronger enforcement to protect minors and adults alike. [4],[3]

The campaigner insists regulation and free speech can coexist, saying public safety requires accountability online in the same way it does offline: “It’s impossible to think that a man on the street could shout that they’ll rape you and nothing happens, but that’s what we’re seeing online,” she said. Policymakers now face the task of balancing civil liberties with new forms of harm driven by AI-enabled tools and platforms’ global reach. [6],[5]

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Source: Noah Wire Services