Tarunima Prabhakar

Chapters Investigation A revenge account. A teenager's stolen reels. Behind both: an economy built on undressing Indian women without their consent. Adrija Bose, Tarunima Prabhakar, Tora Agarwala36 min read Chapter 01 Chapter 01 She had 1.4 million followers, a redemption arc, a subscription page. Start reading the story → Chapter 02 Chapter 02 It began as surveillance, became a business. A Sequoia-backed startup took thirty percent of every transaction...

A 31-year-old woman in Assam downloaded a loan app and, as part of routine verification, uploaded her ID and photograph. Within days, the harassment and extortion began. When she refused further payment, her photograph was manipulated using AI tools to create synthetic nude images. Her phone number was circulated alongside theirs, triggering degrading and threatening calls.

By Tarunima Prabhakar An article published in MediaNama in late July titled The Gap Between Responsibility and Liability of AI provided the following provocation: “Is open sourcing AI enabling an exponential growth in the problematic use cases? ” The article cited the increase in scraping of websites such as the MediaNama website, as one of the problematic use cases of open-source AI.