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Research shows AI chatbots are driving violence against women and girls

18 March 2026
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A person with a mobile phone showing a chatbot on the screen.

A new report provides the first comprehensive analysis of how AI chatbots are facilitating violence against women and girls (VAWG) in dangerous new ways.

The report, which was co-authored by Professor Clare McGlynn from our Durham Law School, shows how AI chatbots are driving, enabling, simulating and normalising violence against women and girls, and exposes the gaps in law and policy.  

Inadequate regulation 

It demonstrates how platforms are enabling and encouraging gender-based violence through deliberate design choices and failures in safety mechanisms.  

The authors make recommendations for reform of the Online Safety Act, criminal law, product safety legislation, as well as a new AI Act.  

Chatbot-driven abuse 

The report finds:  

  • AI chatbots allow roleplays of incest, child sexual abuse and rape with few safeguards, risking the normalisation and legitimisation of this abuse 
  • AI chatbots are creating new forms of violence and abuse, such as chatbot-driven abuse and simulations, requiring urgent action 
  • AI chatbots are intensifying abuse such as stalking with detailed and personalised guidance, likely to escalate offending 
  • AI platform design choices, policies and governance failures are encouraging and enabling violence against women and girls, with harms not simply the result of user misuse 
  • Existing regulation is wholly inadequate to prevent and address chatbot-VAWG  
  • There is a shocking lack of research into how AI chatbots are implicated in violence against women and girls, raising significant concerns about the evidence base for future AI regulation  
Our report warns that chatbot-VAWG represents a rapidly escalating threat. Without early intervention, these harms risk becoming entrenched and scaling quickly, mirroring the trajectory of other forms of tech-facilitated abuse such as deepfake and nudify apps, where early warnings were largely ignored. We must not make the same mistakes again.
Professor Clare McGlynn
Durham Law School

Find out more 

  • Read the report - Invisible No More: How AI Chatbots are Reshaping Violence Against Women and Girls. 
  • The research was funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). 
  • The report was co-authored by Professor Clare McGlynn (Durham University), Professor Yvonne McDermott Rees (Swansea University), Professor Stuart Macdonald (Swansea University), Rüya Tuna Toparlak (Lucerne University), Fabienne Tarrant (independent consultant), and Dr Samantha Treacy (Swansea University).  
  • You can follow Clare McGlynn on LinkedIn and Instagram.  
  • Our Law School is ranked 57th in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025 and third in the UK in the Complete University Guide 2026. Visit our Law webpages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.