Deepfakes and technology-facilitated gender-based violence: the figures and the European Union’s response

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence includes the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, online stalking and harassment and manipulated content such as deepfakes. This contribution brings together the analysis of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European figures and the regulatory response of the European Union as updated in 2026. It focuses on the experience of adult women and on the specific technical and legal instruments that address synthetic media.

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence

In June 2025 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published Mapping policy responses to technology-facilitated gender-based violence in the G7 countries, which examines the responses of the G7 countries. Under the definition adopted, technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TF-GBV) extends the continuum of gender-based violence into the digital sphere and manifests in serious forms such as the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, stalking and hate messages. The paper notes that public figures, and women in public life in particular, are disproportionately targeted and are sometimes driven out of public spaces because of the scale and severity of online abuse.

The OECD analysis focuses on four areas: national strategic and legal frameworks, the regulation of online platforms, data collection mechanisms and capacity-building for justice system actors. The subject was also central to the second edition of the OECD Forum on Gender Equality, held in Paris on 8 and 9 July 2026 under the title Harnessing the Digital Transformation for All.

Deepfakes and non-consensual intimate images

Deepfakes are audiovisual content generated or manipulated with artificial intelligence tools that depict real people in a realistic way. When they portray sexual content without consent, they fall within the forms of image-based abuse. In criminal law, Directive (EU) 2024/1385 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 May 2024 on combating violence against women and domestic violence devotes Article 5 to the non-consensual sharing of intimate or manipulated material and expressly refers to material that, through manipulation, falsely appears to be authentic. The transposition deadline into national law is 14 June 2027. The same directive requires Member States to equip investigating and prosecuting authorities with the expertise and tools needed to gather and secure electronic evidence and to adopt preventive measures, including the development of digital skills to identify and address online violence.

The European figures on adult women

On 3 March 2026 the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) published their joint report on the European gender-based violence survey, conducted with Eurostat among almost 115,000 women. Some 7.0% of working women were harassed online at work and 10.2% of women in a relationship were monitored through social media or location tracking. In the eight Member States where additional questions were asked, 11.7% of women experienced sexual cyber harassment outside work and 8.5% were stalked by digital means; in those same States, 77.0% of the women whose personal information had been published report that this happened online. The figures concern adult women as a whole and not only the adolescent group.

The role of online platforms

The regulation of platforms is one of the four areas identified by the OECD analysis. In the European Union the Digital Services Act (DSA) requires very large online platforms to assess and mitigate the systemic risks arising from their services, including those connected with gender-based violence and the dissemination of illegal content, and provides for notice and removal mechanisms. The production and dissemination of sexual deepfakes sit at the intersection between this framework, which concerns the organisation and moderation of services, and the rules on content generated with artificial intelligence, which concern technical traceability. The combination of the two levels is the element on which the European Union is building its response.

The European Union’s regulatory response

Since 2 August 2026 the transparency obligations laid down in Article 50 of the Artificial Intelligence Act have applied: content generated or manipulated with artificial intelligence, including deepfakes, must be labelled and made detectable in a machine-readable way, and systems that interact with people must disclose their artificial nature. On the policy side, the Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2030, presented by the European Commission on 5 March 2026, lists among its priorities the fight against online violence, including measures against sexually explicit content produced or manipulated with digital tools, and provides for a structured dialogue with very large online platforms based on the safeguards of the Digital Services Act.

Outlook

The known timetable provides for the application of the transparency obligations of Article 50 of the Artificial Intelligence Act from 2 August 2026 and the transposition of Directive (EU) 2024/1385 by 14 June 2027. According to the OECD analysis, what remains to be defined is the harmonisation of definitions across legal systems, the effectiveness of the measures applied by platforms and the improvement of data collection, areas in which the 2025 paper reports uneven progress and gaps that are still open.

In dialogue with the 2030 Agenda

Goal 5 (Gender Equality). Technology-facilitated violence and sexual deepfakes disproportionately affect women and girls.
Goal 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). Criminal law, electronic evidence and platform accountability are at the centre of the European response.
Goal 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure). The labelling of synthetic content and technical traceability are tools provided for by the Artificial Intelligence Act.
Goal 10 (Reduced Inequalities). Online abuse tends to exclude women from public spaces and participation.