Summer Gamble

AI-image-based sexual abuse (AI-IBSA) is an emerging and sensitive problem. There are currently very few qualitative studies on everyday use of generative AI and how it is accounted for in relation to its harmful and abusive dynamics as well as in relation to how users may have been victims of AI-IBSA. A qualitative pilot study sought to examine university students’ experiences with and thoughts on AI-IBSA. In this article, we present and analyse how students negotiated feelings of control and helplessness about generative AI in general and AI-IBSA in particular in focus group discussions. The negotiations between harmless and funny active use of generative AI, knowledge, agency and mastery, on the one hand, and mistrust, apathy, defeatism, reluctance to report abuse, and the inability to spot AI-generated content, on the other hand, reveal two complex dynamics of distancing on the part of the students. The first relates to an epistemological distancing which was discussed in a nuanced way in relation to knowledge and non-knowledge of a technology that is perceived as overwhelming. The second is a praxeological distancing which the students talked about with a sense of apathy, defeatism and barriers to reporting because of social aspects in how the technology is seen as being situated in peer groups, as well as who allegedly has and does not have sufficient knowledge of the technology.