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NOPE
Medium reported severity

Australian campaigner says harassers sent and posted AI-generated violent and sexual images of her with threats during 2025

Caitlin Roper, campaigns manager at the Australian group Collective Shout, told the New York Times (31 October 2025), Mamamia and AAP that from what the Times calls the summer of 2025 people sent and posted images and a video of her that she describes as AI-generated deepfakes, including violent images and images she says were undressed with Grok, X's AI feature, together with threats. The Times captioned them as AI-generated images; its article says the violent images were seemingly enabled by generative AI and that some harassers claimed to have used Grok to create images. Roper says the abuse was deeply traumatic, that for months she spent at least an hour each morning reporting, blocking and documenting it, and that police and the eSafety Commission gave little help. The Times reports that X told her some posts depicting her violent death did not breach its rules and temporarily locked her account after she posted examples. The senders are not identified, and no forensic examination of the images is reported.

AI system
Grok (reported)
Occurred
2025
Reported
31 October 2025
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Depicted or impersonated the person
Reported harm
Psychological DistressExploitation or Abuse
Whose AI use
Someone else’s AI use
Setting
Everyday life · Privacy
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts
6 claims: 6 reported. 7 open questions
People reported harmed
At least 1 person

AI system as recorded: Generative AI image tools (Grok named by the affected person for altered images)

Reported harm

Roper told reporters that she was sent and depicted in images and a video she describes as AI-generated, including violent images, with threats, that the experience was deeply traumatic, and that for months she spent at least an hour each morning reporting, blocking and documenting the abuse. The New York Times says she was traumatized by the threats she received in 2025. She says police and the eSafety Commission offered little assistance, and the Times reports that X temporarily locked her account after she posted examples. No physical attack is reported in the inspected sources.

What remains unknown

  • The full New York Times article was read only from an Internet Archive capture of 9 November 2025; the live page returned HTTP 403.
  • The Mamamia article was re-checked against the body saved on 2026-09-29 (live HTTP 403 and no Internet Archive capture on 2026-10-29). The AAP article, Collective Shout's media releases and the Online Hate Prevention Institute report that Mamamia mentions were not inspected.
  • Mamamia, AAP (through Collective Shout) and the New York Times interviewed Roper; the Times also describes images and screenshots. No source reports a forensic examination of the images or says how the AI attribution was established.
  • The images and messages were not inspected. The senders are unidentified. The dates of the individual images, including the Grok-altered image, are not stated.
  • The record does not establish which AI tools produced the violent images. The harassers' claims of Grok use are reported by the New York Times without detail.
  • The abuse began in the summer of 2025 by Roper's account and lasted about eight months by Mamamia's report; no start or end date is given, so the case is dated to the year.
  • The violent and sexual images and the threats are deliberately not described in detail in this record.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. Roper describes the images as deepfakes and AI-generated images made from her photographs, and says Grok was used to undress an image of her. The New York Times, whose reporter describes the images and screenshots, captions them as violent AI-generated images, says the violent images were seemingly enabled by generative AI, and reports that some harassers claimed to have used Grok to create images. The harassers' own claims of Grok use are the stated basis distinguishing AI generation; no forensic examination is reported, and the tools for the other images are not named.

6 claims: 6 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported During 2025 Caitlin Roper and colleagues at Collective Shout received a surge of abuse on X and other platforms that, by Roper's account and the New York Times' description, included AI-generated images and a deepfake video depicting Roper.

Causal attribution. Roper's account, and the New York Times' caption and hedged description ('seemingly enabled'). No forensic examination of the images is reported, and the sources do not state how the AI attribution was established.

  • ischool.berkeley.edu(opens in new tab) supports · English
    The posts were part of a surge of vitriol directed at Ms. Roper and her colleagues at Collective Shout, an Australian activist group, on X and other social media platforms.
  • ischool.berkeley.edu(opens in new tab) supports · English
    was seemingly enabled — and given a visceral realism — by generative artificial intelligence
  • ischool.berkeley.edu(opens in new tab) supports · English
    In some of the images, Ms. Roper was wearing a blue floral dress that she does, in fact, own
  • mamamia.com.au(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Only this time, the woman in the images had her face.
  • nytimes.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'was recently threatened online with violent A.I.-generated images depicting herself'; 'was seemingly enabled — and given a visceral realism — by generative artificial intelligence'
  • mamamia.com.au(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'They were deepfakes.'; 'And then they also created AI-generated images that showed me being tortured and murdered'
Reported Roper says that Grok, the AI feature on X, was used to undress an image of her, and the New York Times reports that some harassers claimed to have used Grok to create images. The dates of the Grok images are not stated.

Causal attribution. Statement by the affected person, and harassers' own claims as the New York Times reports them; the images were not inspected and no examination is reported.

Reported The New York Times excerpt says Roper was traumatized by the threats she received in 2025. Roper says the abuse is deeply traumatic and that for months she spent at least an hour each morning reporting, blocking and documenting it.

Causal attribution. Statements by the affected person and a reporter's description; no clinical or independent assessment was inspected.

Reported Roper says police gave her an information sheet and said little could be done without an offender's identity, and that the eSafety Commission mainly replied that reports did not meet the threshold for action.

Causal attribution. Statements by the affected person; police and eSafety records were not inspected.

Reported Roper says the abuse began in the summer of 2025 and was linked to Collective Shout's campaign asking payment processors to pressure game storefronts over rape-themed games. Mamamia reports that she describes eight months of abuse.

Causal attribution. The sources describe the sequence and the link to the campaign as Roper reports them; no independent finding on motive or on who sent the images was inspected.

  • nytimes.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Ms. Roper said the torrent of online abuse starting this summer — including hundreds of harassing posts sent specifically to her — was linked to her work on a campaign to shut down violent video games glorifying rape, incest and sexual torture.
  • nytimes.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Oct. 31, 2025
  • mamamia.com.au(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'The abuse started after Collective Shout, an Australian not-for-profit campaigning against the sexualisation of women and girls, launched a campaign against rape content in the gaming industry.'; 'she had endured eight months of constant abuse across all platforms'
Reported The New York Times reports that X told Roper repeatedly that some posts depicting her violent death did not violate its terms of service, and that, according to screenshots, X temporarily locked her account for breaching its policy on gratuitous gore after she posted examples.

Causal attribution. Roper's account and screenshots described by the New York Times; X and xAI did not respond to the Times' requests for comment.

  • nytimes.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    'But the company also told her repeatedly that other posts depicting her violent death did not violate the platform’s terms of service.'; 'Soon after, according to screenshots, X told her that she was in breach of its safety policies against gratuitous gore and temporarily locked her account.'

Sources

4 sources inspected, from 2 underlying accounts. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in English. On 2026-10-29 the live page returned HTTP 403 and the Internet Archive had no capture (404); the cited passages were re-checked against the body saved when it was read on 2026-09-29. Applies to s1.

Read in English (HTTP 200 on 2026-10-29). The page reproduces a truncated excerpt of the New York Times article (s4); it is the same reporting, not an independent account. Applies to s2.

Read in English. On 2026-10-29 the live page returned HTTP 403; the cited passages were re-checked against an Internet Archive capture. Applies to s3.

Read in English on 2026-10-29 from an Internet Archive capture (20251109233916); the live page returned HTTP 403. The reporter interviewed Roper and describes images and screenshots; the article does not say how the AI attribution was established. Applies to s4.

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Australia. Court countries: Unknown.

The New York Times excerpt calls the affected person's group an Australian activist group and Mamamia calls her a Perth woman. Where the senders and the images were located is not stated.

Reviewed for publication 2026-10-29: A named public campaigner describes, in interviews reported by the New York Times, Mamamia and AAP, being depicted in AI-generated violent and sexual images with threats. The AI attribution rests on her account, the Times' description, and harassers' own claims of Grok use reported by the Times; the technical basis is not disclosed. Graphic content and the wording of threats are omitted. All claims are reported accounts.

People reported harmed in this case

At least 1 person

0 AI participants · 1 other person harmed

Additional affected people are described without a reliable count.

One named public campaigner who describes being depicted in AI-generated images and threatened. The Collective Shout page quoting AAP says five team members were targeted with tech-facilitated abuse including morphed images, but the inspected sources give no per-person AI-related detail for the others, so only one person is counted.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Australian campaigner says harassers sent and posted AI-generated violent and sexual images of her with threats during 2025. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-australia-activist-targeted-with-ai-generated-violent-and-altered-images

BibTeX

@misc{2025_australia_activist_targeted_with_ai_generated_violent_and_altered_images,
  title = {Australian campaigner says harassers sent and posted AI-generated violent and sexual images of her with threats during 2025},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-australia-activist-targeted-with-ai-generated-violent-and-altered-images}
}

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