Bollywood star or deepfake? AI floods social media in Asia

Bollywood actors Ranbir Kapoor (left), Bobby Deol (centre) and Rashmika Mandanna (right) pose for a photograph in Mumbai. The lycra video, said Mandanna, was ‘extremely scary not only for me, but also for each one of us who today is vulnerable to so much harm because of how technology is being misused’. — AFP

There was the Bollywood star in skin-tight lycra, the Bangladeshi politician filmed in a bikini and the young Pakistani woman snapped with a man.

None was real, but all three images were credible enough to unleash lust, vitriol – and even allegedly a murder, underlining the sophistication of generative artificial intelligence, and the threats it poses to women across Asia.