Debate contribution: Artificial Intelligence and Online Violence Against Women and Girls

Debate contribution by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on 26 January 2026.

MLA

Dr Steve Aiken OBE

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

26 January 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Artificial Intelligence and Online Violence Against Women and Girls

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5341429

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I declare an interest: as a member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, I attended the AI conference that was hosted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Kuala Lumpur last year. That was about the use of AI and how it was undermining democracy, but the real issue was how it was undermining people's lives and the effect of that. One of the most disappointing things about the conference was the reactions. First, industry representatives basically said, "It's not our problem, because we have First Amendment rights. This is all about freedom of speech". I found that absolutely despicable and disgusting. Secondly, the representatives of the law enforcement agencies basically said, "There's so much going on here that we can't deal with this. Let's put it in the "far too difficult" column. Unless we are given a specific example for which we can go through the IP system, we are not going to deal with it". The most disappointing reaction of all the groups was that of the parliamentarians, who basically said, "Well, if all the major groups, software companies, IT companies and everybody else to do with AI say that they cannot do anything about it, what can we do? If all the international justice organisations, such as Interpol and everybody else, say that there's nothing that they can do about it, we can't do anything about it". There was a collective shrug from the parliamentarians. It was like saying that the issue is so endemic that we will not be able to stop it. Some of the evidence that we were given was horrific, but there was something even more insidious about it. It was not just that images of women — let us be honest; they are nearly always of women — were being taken and put in pornographic poses; it was the fact that the digital identities of those people were being hacked. That is important because so many areas of our lives now involve a digital identity.

They were back-creating the story on social media platforms. An absolutely extraordinary level of computing power would go into doing that. Of course, that used to be a thing that only Governments could do, but now anybody can do it, because the speed and the move — Moore's law on computing power — particularly through the AI system at the moment, means that we are now reaching a point where it is virtually impossible to deal with that.

I for one know that there is an answer to this, because I can rest assured that, while there is a technological solution for creating all those images, there is equally a technological solution that the AI companies, law enforcement agencies and parliamentarians should be pushing to change it. Just as you can use AI to do one thing, you can use AI to do the exact opposite. We are told about programs that were in use that were basically hunting programs — finding the images and hunting them down. Why have we not heard about them? Why are they not being pushed? Why are the companies not saying, "Right, we see that this is a problem. We are going to deal with it in exactly the same way as the problem happened in the first place"? What is stopping people doing that? It is our problem as parliamentarians, because we are not making the issues strong enough. We are not saying to the tech companies, "You cannot do this". We already know that, across Europe and, indeed, in the United Kingdom, various things have been done, and we have gone to the tech companies and said, "Unless you fix that, we are unplugging you". Then, lo and behold, something is done. Why all the hand-wringing that we do as parliamentarians across the piece about this? We are here to enact legislation and to do things to make things change. I am the father of four daughters, and I have seen examples done to other young women. We have one in the Chamber; it is absolutely disgusting. It makes me sick every time I see this sort of thing, but what makes me even angrier is the fact that there is a solution but we are not doing it. As legislators, we need to set the tone. We need to legislate to stop it, and, if we make it difficult enough for them, it will stop. That was the lesson that came out clearly from meeting some of the largest companies, because, believe it or not, the one very large company that sat behind the bamboo curtain — obviously, I will not mention the name of the company — made it clear that, if it becomes a problem in this particular country, it will be stopped and will not be allowed to occur. That is what we should be talking about —

— and, as legislators, we need to be able to do that.

822 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:31 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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