AI’s Assault On The Black Body :The New Consumer Protection Crisis
AI’s Assault On The Black Body :The New Consumer Protection Crisis
Publish Date: 2026-06-18 14:24:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
Cheerful African American Student Girl Using Mobile Phone Texting And Learning In Educational Application Standing Outside Near College Building. New App For Your Cellphone Concept
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The technology is simply frightening.
Upload a photo, wait a few seconds, and then an app generates a fake nude image convincing enough to humiliate a classmate, extort an ex-partner, derail a career, or spread across the internet before the victim even knows it exists.
No camera, no consent, and no crime scene for the police to investigate. Just artificial intelligence weaponized against another human being.
For generations, Americans have debated consumer protection through the lens of defective products, predatory lenders, unsafe food, and identity theft. But artificial intelligence is forcing us to expand that definition. Today’s most dangerous consumer products may not be something we buy at a store. Instead, they’re apps that can digitally strip a person naked with a single click.
For Black Americans, this technology lands on centuries-old fault lines, ones that have come under recent attacks from state, federal and local lawmakers who are working to upend the accurate telling of history.
From enslavement to minstrel shows, from unauthorized medical experimentation to modern surveillance technologies, Black bodies have repeatedly been treated as flattened commodities, rather than those deserving autonomy and dignity.
AI-powered “nudify” applications are not inventing exploitation. They are industrializing it. This technology has simply become faster, cheaper, and infinitely more scalable.
That is why this conversation is about far more than celebrity deepfakes or viral internet hoaxes. It is about whether our consumer protection laws are prepared for an economy where someone’s image—perhaps their most personal possession—can be manipulated, monetized, and distributed without permission.
For Black women and girls, AI doesn’t create a new form of abuse–it just…
