When Singaporean actress Eswari Gunasagar discovered fabricated images of herself circulating online in early July, she faced a violation that many in the digital age have come to dread. What made the experience even more damaging than the initial breach of privacy was the reaction from observers who, rather than expressing outrage at the violation itself, chose instead to mock her for speaking up. Her subsequent candid video post on social media became a watershed moment in raising awareness about the intersection of artificial intelligence misuse and the deeply troubling culture of victim-blaming that persists across Southeast Asia.
The 36-year-old actress discovered that someone had created an image depicting her in a bikini—clothing she has never publicly worn in any photographs or social media posts—and shared it online with another individual. The fabrication crossed a clear line from mere technological novelty into the territory of image-based abuse, a form of harassment that weaponises intimate or suggestive imagery to humiliate and intimidate its targets. When Eswari learned of the post through alerts from concerned followers, she took immediate action, reporting the content and directly messaging the person responsible with a clear ultimatum: remove the image or face police involvement. The speed of her response reflected an understanding that these situations can spiral rapidly if left unchecked.
However, the situation escalated in ways that revealed the vulnerability of individuals facing online harassment. Her father subsequently informed her that he had encountered the same fraudulent image on the man's profile, where it was being used with an alarming claim: that Eswari was the man's wife. Even more disturbingly, the post included a caption expressing violent intentions, transforming a violation of privacy into a chilling threat. This escalation forced Eswari to escalate her own response, filing a formal police report and meticulously documenting all the posts the individual had made. Her decision to screenshot the evidence and share details with her followers proved instrumental—within less than three hours of the community mobilising to report the profile, the entire account was removed from the platform.
Yet the speed of the technological remedy paled in comparison to the psychological weight of what followed. Eswari was far more shaken by people's responses to her disclosure than by the initial incident itself. A screenshot of her post had been reshared with commentary suggesting that, as a public figure, she should expect such treatment. The commenter sarcastically implied that only famous male actors like Italian performer Michele Morrone or Indian star Hrithik Roshan would escape such ridicule, characterising celebrity status as an invitation to privacy violations. What made this mockery particularly damaging was its reception: the post garnered likes and laughter from numerous people, including from women, revealing how deeply embedded victim-blaming attitudes have become in online culture.
This social response points to a crisis that extends far beyond the technical problem of deepfake technology. Eswari articulated this distinction with clarity in her subsequent reflections: the issue is not merely whether the technology exists to create fake intimate images, but rather the absence of empathy, the wilful ignorance about the harm caused, and society's readiness to excuse and even laugh at such behaviour. When a person's privacy is violated through fabricated imagery, the appropriate social response should centre on condemning the violation and supporting the victim. Instead, as occurred in her case, victims face an additional layer of harm through public ridicule and normalisation of their abuse. This secondary victimisation effectively punishes those who have been wronged for daring to speak about their experience.
The actress framed her situation as a broader indictment of contemporary attitudes toward harassment and dignity. By laughing at victims rather than defending them, society becomes complicit in perpetuating harm. The mockery signals to potential harassers that their behaviour carries minimal social cost, while simultaneously discouraging other victims from coming forward. Eswari's central argument—that basic empathy is a prerequisite for a functioning society—challenges the notion that such violations are inevitable consequences of living in the digital age. Instead, she positions them as symptoms of a society that has failed to establish and enforce standards of dignity and respect online.
The implications of this incident extend throughout Southeast Asia, where similar cases of image-based abuse have surfaced with increasing frequency. Malaysia, like Singapore, has grappled with questions about how best to protect citizens from online harms while respecting free speech principles. The viral nature of Eswari's disclosure serves as a clarion call for both technological platforms and users to reconsider their responsibilities. Platforms must implement stronger detection and removal systems for manipulated intimate imagery, while individual users must examine their own responses to such violations and resist the impulse to participate in victim-blaming discourse.
Singapore's recent establishment of the Online Safety Commission represents a policy-level acknowledgment that online harms require dedicated institutional attention. The commission currently addresses five categories of particularly severe online violations: intimate image abuse, image-based child abuse, doxing, online harassment, and online stalking. The inclusion of intimate image abuse at the outset reflects recognition that such violations cause significant psychological and social harm to victims. Plans to expand the commission's purview to eight additional categories of online harms suggest that policymakers understand the evolving nature of digital threats. For Malaysian readers and policymakers, this model offers a template for how to structure institutional responses to online abuse without requiring victims to navigate the criminal justice system alone.
The deeper question raised by Eswari's experience concerns the relationship between technological capability and moral restraint. Artificial intelligence systems that can generate convincing fake imagery represent a genuine technological advance, one with legitimate applications in entertainment and other fields. Yet the same capability can be weaponised against individuals, particularly women, who become targets of harassment campaigns that weaponise their images. The existence of the technology does not necessitate its misuse, but neither does it prevent such misuse. What prevents such misuse, or at least makes it socially costly, is the presence of shared values around consent, dignity, and respect—values that Eswari's experience suggests are not yet sufficiently embedded in online culture.
Moving forward, Eswari's public intervention may prove significant in shifting how such incidents are discussed and understood. By refusing to accept the victim-blaming narrative and instead centring her experience on the perpetrator's actions and society's response, she has modelled a different approach to public discourse around digital harassment. Her statement that "we have a much bigger problem than AI" if we cannot demonstrate basic empathy toward those who have been violated cuts to the heart of the matter. Technology, after all, merely amplifies existing human impulses and social failures. The real work of prevention lies not in regulating algorithms but in cultivating a culture where violating another person's dignity and privacy is universally understood as unacceptable, and where those who speak out against such violations receive support rather than scorn.
