Dhaka: Bangladesh is witnessing a quiet yet devastating rise in the misuse of technology with rising incidents of women being targetted by superimposing their faces onto pornographic content.
Enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), this practice, known as ‘deepfake’, primarily targets women, with consequences – such as social ruin, forced withdrawal from public life, and, in the worst cases, death – borne almost entirely by the victims, a report said.
According to a report in Bangladesh’s leading newspaper ‘Daily Sun’, the victims come from diverse walks of life, including students, activists, professionals, politicians, actresses, and anonymous private individuals.
“In one of the most devastating cases documented in Bangladesh, a woman took her own life after an AI-edited video of her was shared with her family. The perpetrator understood precisely how Bangladeshi social structures work — family honour, community judgement, and the irreversibility of digital shame — and used a fabricated video to trigger all three at once. Her death was not an accident of technology. It was the intended result of its deliberate misuse,” the report detailed.
Highlighting another case, the report referred to Rajshahi university student Riya, a pseudonym used in academic research, whose face was digitally imposed in sexually explicit images and circulated among student networks.
“The content spread to friends and relatives. She was pressured to resign from every student organisation she belonged to. Her mother told her to quit her studies and leave campus. Riya wanted legal help but feared that filing a complaint would draw media attention and amplify the harm. She did nothing. The content remained,” the report mentioned.
Syeda Rizwana Hasan, former advisor to Bangladesh’s Ministry of Environment, was targetted in early 2025 when a doctored image – placing her face onto a body sourced from an adult website – was widely circulated on social media platforms through an account called “Chemical Ali”, known for repeatedly targetting prominent women.
Citing the findings of Strengthening Resilience Against Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) and Promoting Digital Development, the report noted that 89 per cent of women social media users in Bangladesh have faced online violence at least once.
It further stated that the profile of deepfake abusers in Bangladesh reveals a wide and disturbing range of perpetrators.
“The most documented type is the extortionist — usually a man, often someone the victim knows or has encountered online. He downloads photos from social media, uses a deepfake tool to generate explicit content, and then contacts the victim with a threat: Pay, comply, or the video goes to your family, your college, your employer,” the report highlighted.
It also cited a study conducted by Bangladesh-based human rights group VOICE last year which showed that coordinated digital attacks against women activists and female government advisors are aimed not just at humiliating them, but at forcing them out of public life entirely.
(IANS)
