A LOOK INTO OUR POSITIONS ON TOPICS THAT IMPACT OUR WORLD.
At Girls Geared for Greatness, we believe that awareness, education, and advocacy are fundamental in shifting the world and creating a better future for girls.
Through white papers and position papers, we investigate topics impacting girls and women and share our perspectives as an organization.
SUMMER 2026 TOPIC
AI GENERATED DEEPFAKE EXPLOITATION AMONG YOUTH UNDER 18: SAFETY, CONSENT, MENTAL HEALTH, AND POLICY
WHITE PAPER
WRITTEN BY ELLIE MACAULEY
POSITION PAPER
WRITTEN BY ELLIE MACAULEY
Girls Geared for Greatness believes that the rise of AI-generated nonconsensual sexual imagery (AGNCSI) targeting girls represents an urgent threat to youth health, safety, privacy, and dignity. We believe that every girl deserves the right to feel safe online without the fear of exploitation through new technologies like AI. To protect girls from digital exploitation, proactive action is needed from individuals, communities, technology companies, experts, and policymakers as AI evolves. This position paper outlines GGG’s guiding principles and organizational position on AGNCSI, emphasizing four key areas of action: education, awareness, advocacy, and policy. Together, these recommendations reflect GGG's commitment to protecting girls, promoting digital safety and consent, and ensuring a future where technological advances never come at the expense of a child's safety.
Around the world, women and girls are repeatedly and disproportionately targeted by AGNCSI, also more informally known as deepfake nudes. The relative ease with which AGNCSI can now be created reflects what Girls Geared for Greatness believes is a fundamental failure to protect girls in digital spaces. Recent advances in generative AI have dramatically lowered the technical barriers for any individual to produce realistic AI explicit images without a person's consent. Perpetrators can exploit publicly available photographs from social media and other online platforms to create these images. Because these technologies continue to evolve rapidly, GGG believes that prevention, education, and accountability must advance just as quickly. Current systems provide some protection against AGNCSI, but they fall short of adequately protecting victims, particularly girls and other minors.
Existing legal frameworks have struggled to keep up with the development of generative AI, leaving significant gaps in accountability and victim protection. Cases involving AGNCSI, nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII), and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) have exposed ambiguities in how existing laws apply to AI-generated content, allowing some perpetrators to avoid accountability while victims receive limited justice. Additionally, lawmakers face challenges in developing legislation at the speed of evolving AI technologies, which results in an uneven and often fragmented legal landscape. Stronger protections and responses must evolve with AI technologies to ensure that all children receive meaningful protection from emerging forms of digital exploitation.
Girls Geared for Greatness’s principles inform the organization’s position on the current rise of AI-generated deepfake exploitation of minors. GGG believes that technology should never outpace child safety, and as technologies like AI advance, young people’s privacy, dignity, and well-being need to be considered. GGG recognizes that AGNCSI undermines consent, privacy, and personal autonomy. Consent does not disappear simply because an image is created with AI rather than captured by a camera, as every individual has the right to control the use of their own likeness. This form of abuse can have lasting effects on victims' mental health, educational experiences, social relationships, and overall well-being.
Its consequences often extend past the digital environment, making it essential to recognize victims' experiences and understand the lasting impact of digital exploitation. Every girl and child affected by this abuse deserves to be treated with dignity, compassion, and respect.
Based on these guiding principles, Girls Geared for Greatness supports a comprehensive approach to AGNCSI involving education, awareness, advocacy, and policy. Education serves as the foundation of GGG's approach to preventing AGNCSI and reducing the harms associated with AI-enabled exploitation. Through proactive education, children, teens, young adults, parents, educators, and communities can develop the knowledge and skills needed to navigate emerging technologies like AI safely and responsibly. Education efforts should include defining AGNCSI and increasing awareness of related forms of exploitation, including nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Individuals of all ages must understand that creating and distributing AGNCSI is harmful, abusive, and illegal. Additionally, current internet safety programs need to expand to include conversations about AI-generated media, digital exploitation, and responsible online behavior. Conversations about consent should also expand beyond physical interactions to include digital consent, emphasizing the importance of respect and that every individual deserves control over their own image, identity, and likeness online. Finally, education surrounding AGNCSI should include discussions about ethical AI use and the responsibilities an individual has when interacting with developing technologies like AI. By building these skills early, education becomes one of the strongest tools for preventing harm.
Awareness is another key area of focus supported by Girls Geared for Greatness. Increasing awareness of AGNCSI is essential to ensuring that individuals know how to respond if they become victims and understand the resources available to support them. Every individual, regardless of age, should know what steps to take if AGNCSI depicting themselves or someone they know appears online. Victims should document any evidence of the content, including screenshots, URLs, and other relevant information that may be valuable if they choose to pursue legal action or file a report. If the content appears on a social media platform or website, it should be reported to the platform as soon as possible using reporting procedures. GGG also encourages individuals to utilize trusted reporting and removal resources. StopNCII.org provides support for adults by helping prevent the further sharing of nonconsensual intimate images online. At the same time, Take It Down, a free service developed by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, helps individuals under the age of 18 remove or prevent the online sharing of AI-generated explicit images.
If you or someone in your life becomes a victim of AGNCSI, it is important to act. GGG recommends the acronym SAVE.
S – Save evidence by taking screenshots, copying URLs, usernames, dates, and any other information
A – Alert by telling a trusted adult in your life
V – Verify and report the content to the platform where it appears and use reporting tools (i.e., Take It Down or StopNCII)
E – Explore legal, school, and mental health resources, and remember that what happened is not your fault.
By increasing awareness about available reporting tools and support resources, victims can respond more quickly, reduce further harm, access the assistance they need, and challenge the stigma surrounding AGNCSI.
Advocacy is the third key area of focus in Girls Geared for Greatness's position on combating AGNCSI. The harms of AI-generated exploitation can be intensified when victims face blame, judgment, or disbelief. GGG believes harmful narratives that place responsibility on victims rather than perpetrators must be challenged to foster survivor-centered responses to AGNCSI. It is essential to amplify girls’ voices in conversations about technologies that directly affect their safety and well-being.
Although young people require protection from AGNCSI, they are also strong advocates for creating safer digital environments and deserve a seat at the table when policies and technologies that affect them are being developed. Advocacy can also involve bringing people together, and collective advocacy is needed from communities, educators, organizations, and leaders to stop AGNCSI. By encouraging collaboration among communities, educators, organizations, technology companies, and policymakers, advocacy can help ensure that protecting girls remains a priority as AI technologies continue to evolve.
A final area of focus that Girls Geared for Greatness wants to highlight is policy. Although existing laws provide some protections against AI-generated exploitation, significant gaps remain in existing legal frameworks, requiring continued research, legislative reform, and innovative policy solutions. Each of the 50 states has some form of protection against nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII), but some of this legislation was enacted before the creation of AI and therefore does not specifically address AGNCSI. The extent to which current legislation includes digital sexual exploitation and AGNCSI varies, but to combat this issue, more uniform and direct responses are needed.
The federal TAKE IT DOWN ACT passed by Congress in 2025 is one step in the right direction. State-level legislation like Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1050 – requiring mandated reports to report any AI-generated CSAM–and others can serve as models for future federal legislation. Policy often lags behind emerging technologies, particularly as AI continues to evolve rapidly. Therefore, legislation must be proactive, adaptable, and capable of addressing future technological developments rather than responding only after harm has occurred.
GGG supports continued research, collaboration among policymakers and experts, and the development of comprehensive federal and state laws that directly address AGNCSI. These laws should better protect minors, close existing legal gaps, and provide meaningful pathways to justice for victims.
The rapid advancement of AI presents both opportunities and risks, but no technological innovation should come at the expense of an individual's safety, privacy, or dignity. Girls Geared for Greatness calls on educators, families, technology companies, policymakers, and community leaders to work together to prevent AI-generated exploitation and create safer digital environments for everyone. Through education, awareness, advocacy, and policy reform, we can better protect all children from emerging forms of digital exploitation while ensuring that technological innovation is developed responsibly and ethically.
View original format of this position paper HERE.