‘Digital public shaming’: Chinese AI tools under fire for pornographic deepfakes

South China Morning Post · Feb 26, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Chinese AI tools have come under fire for allowing deepfake images that critics say are a form of “digital public shaming” targeting women.Free Nora, a grass-roots feminist media collective in China, reported last week that many internet users had been exploiting the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Doubao to generate non-consensual pornographic images of real women.“In the shadowy corners of social media, a large-scale ‘digital public shaming’ campaign targeting ordinary women has quietly unfolded, fuelled by Doubao,” said a social media article published by the group, which focuses on women’s rights and policy advocacy.Doubao, owned by tech giant ByteDance, is China’s leading chatbot in terms of users. According to data published by QuestMobile, Doubao had 155 million weekly active users as of late December, while DeepSeek had 81.6 million.ByteDance has not replied to the South China Morning Post’s request for comment.“For many women, a face they once believed to be uniquely their own has become raw material in a digital landscape where it can be extracted, altered and sexually degraded at will,” the article said.While AI deepfakes have emerged as a global concern, prompting many countries to develop regulatory guard rails, effective regulation remains limited in China, according to Free Nora.