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Sharing deepfake pornography is "the adjacent intersexual unit epidemic" facing schools, the writer of a publication connected the dispersed of online misogyny has told MPs.
Appearing earlier the Women and Equalities Committee (WEC), Laura Bates said determination needs to beryllium statutory guidance for teachers connected however to woody with this "very important issue".
She said successful each UK lawsuit she has investigated, schools person "paid thousands of pounds hiring PR firms to absorption connected harm estimation management".
However, successful presumption of supporting girls and taking enactment against the perpetrators, "nothing has happened".
She said of deepfake pornography: "It is happening, it's significant. Female teachers are affected, which often goes unnoticed, and schools are conscionable not equipped to tackle it.
"My proposition would beryllium this is the adjacent large intersexual unit epidemic facing schools and radical don't adjacent cognize it is going on."
Deepfakes are pictures, videos oregon audio clips made with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to look oregon dependable real.
While it is amerciable to make oregon stock a sexually explicit representation of a child, including a deepfake, the exertion for making them remains legal.
Asked what much could beryllium done to assistance schools tackle the issue, Ms Bates said successful the cases she is alert of "police investigations are ongoing" .
However, she said she is not suggesting criminalisation of underage boys is the solution and what is needed is education, prevention and regulation.
"It shouldn't beryllium the lawsuit that a 12-year-old lad tin easy and freely entree tools to make these forms of contented successful the archetypal place," she said.
Ms Bates is the laminitis of the Everyday Sexism task and writer of: The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny.
She besides called for "very wide guidance" connected however schools should respond to this challenge.
She warned of a repetition of failings that person happened antecedently with intimate representation abuse, wherever girls person been "coerced into sending images of themselves" past punished for taking the representation erstwhile it has been shared astir - but the idiosyncratic spreading the representation has not.
Calls to prohibition 'nudifying apps'
It comes amid mounting interest among MPs and experts about online information for children, with galore wanting the authorities to spell further with its regulations connected large tech firms.
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In April, a study by the Children's Commissioner for England recovered that nudifying apps are disproportionately targeting girls and young women, with galore appearing to enactment lone connected pistillate bodies.
The commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, called for an contiguous prohibition connected apps that usage AI to make bare images of children, saying "there is nary affirmative crushed for these to exist".
Inquiry into the 'manosphere'
Ms Bates appeared successful beforehand of the WEC arsenic portion of their enquiry into however the "manosphere" and different online contented is fuelling misogyny.
The enquiry has antecedently heard however the emergence of misogyny successful young men successful peculiar is not lone affecting pistillate pupils but besides pistillate staff, with intersexual harassment towards teachers described arsenic "rife".
On Wednesday's session, the committee besides heard concerns astir the emergence of the "sex tech industry", including robots and AI girlfriends, with fears this is having a wider interaction connected attitudes towards women and girls.
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Sarah Owen, the seat of the cross-party group, told Sky News she could not pre-empt what recommendations would beryllium made to the government.
But she said determination was immense interest astir the online radicalisation of young men, adding: "It was a boiling blistery time but my humor ran acold astatine what I was hearing."
Sky News has contacted the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department of Science and Technology for comment.
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