Digital Gender-Based Violence Perpetrated by AI in Latin America: Between a Legal Vacuum and the Lack of Protection for Women in Public Life

Abstract

This research analyzes digital gender-based violence facilitated by artificial intelligence (AI) against women politicians, journalists, and human rights defenders in Latin America, with particular attention to Mexico and Argentina. Using a documentary and comparative legal analysis approach, the study examines academic research, legal frameworks, electoral case law, and the MESECVI Inter-American Model Law to Prevent, Punish, and Eradicate Gender-Based Digital Violence against Women. The study proposes understanding the protection gap not as an absolute absence of legislation, but as identifiable failures throughout the response chain: the definition of conduct, the protection of legally protected interests, attribution and evidence, urgent measures, institutional responsibility, platform intervention, and reparation. The findings show that evidence on digital violence is more robust in the case of politically active women, whereas specific evidence on AI-generated attacks against journalists and women human rights defenders remains limited. Mexico provides legal recognition of real or simulated intimate content, but its framework is characterized by subnational fragmentation and insufficient coverage of non-sexual synthetic attacks; Argentina has a broad framework for protection against digital violence, although it lacks a specific criminal offense addressing deepfakes involving adults. The study concludes that the regional response requires institutional coordination, rapid protection, differentiated responsibility, and comprehensive reparation, in accordance with the framework proposed by the MESECVI Model Law