‘Looked so real’: How AI is being weaponised against India’s Muslim women

New Delhi, India – When Samreen Ayoub first saw the video, she was stunned.

The freelance model from India-administered Kashmir was scrolling on her phone last year when a friend sent her a clip circulating on Instagram.

The video appeared to tell the story of her life in New Delhi, complete with a narrator’s voice, scrolling captions and headlines like a television news segment. But it was entirely fabricated.

“It was proper stalking,” Ayoub, 24, said. “They had followed my life from my first semester to the last at the university.”

The video stitched together photographs from Ayoub’s time as a student at New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University – images drawn from everyday moments of campus life, including group projects, farewell gatherings and selfies with classmates.

The voiceover, generated using artificial intelligence, falsely claimed she was a Muslim woman “selling her body” to Hindu men. It misidentified people in the photographs and labelled her own brother as her “pimp”.

“It looked so real that if someone, even my parents, saw the video, they would think it was real,” Ayoub said.

She is one of several Muslim women who have experienced what researchers described as a pattern that is becoming increasingly visible: the use of AI to generate sexualised imagery and propaganda.