Harmful effects of facial recognition technology on women!

By M.Y.Siddiqui

Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) poses significant, disproportionate harms to women due to built-in algorithmic biases, lack of regulatory oversight, and historical imbalances in data collection. This is because many foundational artificial intelligence models were trained on datasets overwhelmingly dominated by white men (white people), the technology inherently fails women at much higher rates. Such failures manifest in profound social, legal and psychological consequences.

FRT can be weaponised against women primarily by stripping away their anonymity, linking their public identities to private data, and enabling targeted harassment, extortion and stalking. Bad actors leverage massive, scrapped databases and reverse-image search engines to exploit women in several distinct ways. Methods include reverse-image search and doxxing, digital gatekeeping, legal extortion, de-anonymising sex workers/vulnerable groups, deep fakes, synthetic media, weaponising flawed data and misidentification.

The blackmail relating to these systems frequently misidentify women, bad actors can exploit these system vulnerabilities. A stalker or corrupt actor or a black mailer could leverage a false positive match, such as a woman wrongfully linked to a crime or database, to threaten her reputation, trigger a wrongful arrest, or force compliance. It has the potential to target any woman, noticeable on social media, public places CCTV, or group photographs or single photo on computing devices, to bring to disrepute any woman, to mar her background checks for marriage prospects, break marriages, or other types of blackmail or to be a part of crime syndicates.  Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cyber experts believe it to be so.  Several professional experts, I spoke to, vouched for such blackmail.

The primary ways FRT is used for blackmail include doxxing, deanonymisation, digital extortion via removal fees, combining FRT with deep fakes, exploiting algorithmic flaws, and misidentification. Publicly available FRT platforms like PimEyes allow any one to upload a photo of a person and find every other place their face appears on the Internet. Blackmailers threaten to send these images to employers, family, or partners unless a financial or sexual demand is met. Some face search platforms have been accused of exploiting vulnerable individuals by requiring expensive monthly “protection plans” to block explicit or unwanted photos from appearing in public search results.

Many women, particularly sex workers, adult content creators, or survival workers, rely heavily on strict anonymity to maintain their safety and separate their personal lives from their work. Attackers use FRT to cross-reference professional or pseudonymous photos with private social media profiles like Facebook, Linkedin, or Instagram. Once the attacker matches the anonymous persona to the woman’s real world identity, they threaten to “out” her to her family, community, or daytime employer if she refuses to comply with their demands.

The rise of AI has made it easy to generate highly convincing , sexually explicit deep fakes. As AI enabled consumer tech, such as smart glasses advances, strangers can capture a woman’s face in public without her consent and use FRT to instantly find her name and digital footprint. Blackmailers take these easily acquired public photos, feed them into AI software to generate explicit material, and threaten to ruin the victim’s reputation by distributing the fake media unless they receive the payments.

Facial recognition algorithms suffer from documented systemic biases, exhibiting significantly higher error rates for women of colour than white men. These tools are prone to misidentification. Women can be falsely matched to criminal mug shots or watch lists. Malicious actors can weaponise these flawed automated matches to threaten women with legal ruin, public humiliation or job loss unless extortion demands are satisfied.

There are several devices to protect digital footprint, how to opt out of major or otherwise databases, or the availability of legal framework to fight back against digital extortion/blackmail. There are also do’s and don’ts for women how to conduct in public places like markets, malls, cinema halls, special family and relatives’ celebratory rituals or functions, to avoid FRT manipulative tactics, thus be guarded and safe. Current privacy laws handle biometric extortion; digital safety strategies women can use to protect their photos, or organisations that support victims of online harassment. However, it is always better to be extra pre-cautious to be safe than repent later!

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