‘You don’t need to whisper rumours any more’: How AI sex videos are harming women
Kate Bell discovered AI-generated deep fake sex videos and images of herself and other women on her former partner's laptop, leading to feelings of fear and betrayal. Despite having evidence on the laptop, the investigation stalled because her partner refused to provide access to his locked phone. Bell, now working in cybersecurity, highlights how AI can be weaponized to dehumanize women without needing to spread rumors or share content widely.
- ▪Kate Bell found numerous AI-altered sexual images and deep fake videos of herself and other women on her former partner's laptop.
- ▪Her former partner pleaded guilty to two charges of filming her without consent but appealed the conviction, claiming mental health issues.
- ▪The police investigation was hindered because the suspect refused to provide the passcode to his mobile phone, where original source material may have been stored.
- ▪Bell stated that the deep fakes included violent and degrading imagery, such as her being superimposed into aggressive pornography.
- ▪Though there is no evidence the material was shared online, Bell emphasizes the psychological harm and dehumanization caused by non-consensual AI-generated content.
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Story provenance
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| Original publisher | The Sydney Morning Herald |
| Canonical URL | https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/you-don-t-need-to-whisper-rumours-any-more-how-ai-sex-videos-are-harming-women-20260515-p5zxng.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed |
| Publication time | Sun, 17 May 2026 20:00:00 +1000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-17T10:07:13.017Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-17T10:07:13.017Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | AB-ojiSd81x6 |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Sydney Morning Herald.