The New Age of Sexism is, once again for Laura Bates, a must read. Like Men Who Hate Women, it is dense and at times a very difficult book to read, but it is also so informative. We all need to be very aware of how misogyny is being baked into AI & new technology and how we can possibly hope to regulate & prevent this new age.

Bates's tone in Men Who Hate Women felt almost more disappointed than anything else, but here Bates is clearly angry (and rightly so). Maybe that makes The New Age of Sexism a more frightening book to read, or maybe it just makes the call to action feel that much stronger. I can't speak for the effect that this book will have on all readers, but I must emphasize how important it is for you to read & be informed about the inherent biases that train ai models and the consequences of trying to fix them later vs. addressing them right now AND about the lack of laws, regulations, and preventative measures that currently exist in any of our regulating bodies or governments to protect us from the effects of this new tech.

Thanks so much to Netgalley & Sourcebooks for this e-arc of The New Age of Sexism.

This was a very timely warning on the current and potential future implications of AI through the lens of sexism. I liked the way the book was divided up into sub topics. That made it very easy to follow, despite having many dense statistics. I liked the way Bates outlined the current and future issues as well as potential solutions to mitigate harm against women from AI and the tech bro oligopoly. At times the book felt slightly repetitive, as it is looking at a very specific issue. I hope to see more writing from Laura Bates on this topic.

In The New Age of Sexism, Laura Bates studies how modern technology is being used to dehumanise and exploit women. Covering topics such as sex bots and cyber brothels, to nudifying apps and AI girlfriends, Bates’s study makes for grim and alarming reading.

Recommending this book does come from enjoyment but the poignant messages that come from the disturbing topics being discussed. Bates provides thorough research to present compelling arguments. Whilst focused on misogyny, the book also considers impacts on race, sexuality and transgender, and ableism. A tough but provocative read.

Copy of the review I posted on GoodReads.

Welcome to a world where legislators are more worried about deepfakes that could discredit a politician, than about 12 year old boys creating fake pornographic videos of their classmates. Those boys got caught, the school did not apply any sanctions. Boys will be boys, right? Since when has child porn become acceptable?

Laura Bates takes us through a catalogue of tech that is being used to harass, objectify or abuse women. Online harrassment can affect anyone with access to the Internet, but teenage girls are the most likely victims. Some companies are manufacturing advanced sex bots, some of them looking and sounding like children (and it is legal in most countries). Cyber brothels are offering services that seem straight out of the (otherwise excellent) series Dollhouse.

I am an adult woman, working in tech (video games, even, and I used to work for one of the Metaverse darling companies). While not being a stranger to online sexual harassment, I unfortunately discovered that it is mostly directed at teenagers. When I was 14, predators were everywhere and fully grown men were trying to get my phone number and convince me to take my shirt off on webcam. When I was twenty, the usual assumption in Open Source conferences was that I was there to find a boyfriend. Now well into my thirties, I am not ripe for this type of abuse anymore. Aging online seems to come with a priviledge: I became invisible. The dirty men (it was always men) who were sexually harassing me were doing it because I was young. Because I did not know yet how to defend myself against abuse.

Back to the book. It is terrifying, sad, revolting. It is not an easy book to read. I am not sure if I would advise my sons to read it (at least, not while they are still young). But it is an important read for parents of boys and girls alike. They need to know what is happening in the (not so innocent) world of children. They need to know that the "slut" slurs that we encountered in middle school are turning into real life looking porn videos featuring classmates. And they need to know that schools are completely out of their league with all those new technologies.

There is a whole chapter about AI girlfriends - the fantasy of a conversional agent who pretends to be your girlfriend, and cannot say no. Always available, always agreeable, they lack the depth of a real connection. I already knew it was a thing, and was deeply saddened and disturbed by the movie Her when it came out (so much so that I went to the cinema to watch it twice). Technology was supposed to connect us and provide us with more opportunities to reach our loved ones. Instead, they seem to have amplified our loneliness. Something is seriously wrong if people prefer to enter a "relationship" with a chatbot. If you are disappointed with humans, the more healthy way to deal with it would be to get a pet. A computer cannot love you back the same way a cat or a dog will.

This book was pretty bleak. It ends with a chapter about the future that invites us to fight back. Yes, we need more legal frameworks. We need more education. We need to actually teach empathy with children - relating to others and understanding their perspective can mostly be taught. In Denmark, our children are provided with empathy education, starting from kindergarten. I would have liked the book to close on a high note - like the ability of AI tech to also detect underage victims in pornographic videos, or facial recognition helping us catch pedophiles. The problem is not the tool, it is how people are using it. Technology changes the world, and it is up to us to decide how this fantastic leverage is used. Could that be the topic of the next book?

Thank you #NetGalley, Sourcebooks and Laura Bates for the ARC.

This book delivers a deeply unsettling critique of how artificial intelligence and the broader internet ecosystem are exacerbating misogyny and marginalizing women's voices. It confronts the reckless ethos of Silicon Valley—where the mantra “move fast and break things” has led to innovation without accountability. Tech companies have consistently resisted implementing meaningful safeguards, even as their platforms fuel extremism, misinformation, and violence. We've seen this before: numerous investigations have exposed how algorithms on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, and other social media platforms have amplified hate, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

What sets this book apart is its focus on how AI specifically intensifies gendered harm. The author argues that the male-dominated leadership in tech often fails to grasp the depth of systemic sexism, and this blind spot has allowed AI tools to become conduits for abuse.

Laura Bates has wrote the manual for how we as a society deal with the more, male focused, parts of AI.

Detailing all the ways AI has been used to pander to male fantasy, through cyber brothels, AI girlfriends, deepfakes among a few, she paints a harrowing tale of how society is progressing with this tech, if progressing is the right word, possibly regressing.

I think for the industry I work in, as a software engineer, this should be required reading for all who will come into contact with developing user focused AI, as it’s an urgent concern.

The intro felt very repetitive and obvious. She sometimes wrote about the online experience like a boomer who’d never been on the internet before, which was weird considering the subject matter? Maybe just trying to reach a certain audience? First chapter and her research were amazing though.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Laura Bates's "The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny" is one of the most urgent nonfiction books of the past several years—urgent not because it speculates about some distant dystopian future, but because it lays bare the ways misogyny is being re-engineered, scaled, and normalized by technologies that already surround us. While this appears to be a book about technology, Bates argues it's fundamentally about something much more profound: society's persistent failure to recognize women's full humanity, a failure now being encoded into the very architecture of our digital future. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, sex robots, and the metaverse are not neutral tools; as Bates persuasively shows, they are being built atop, and shaped by, the gender inequalities of the societies that create them. The result is a digital landscape where exploitation is easy, profitable, and largely unregulated.

Bates writes from deep research and lived experience, weaving statistical evidence, survivor testimony, and her own encounters with deepfake pornography and virtual sexual assault. The book covers a wide arc—from the dominance of nonconsensual pornography in deepfake production, to harassment in VR, to AI companions and sex robots programmed for submission or abuse. It is harrowing reading—the pages contain graphic depictions and frank discussions of sexual violence, coercion, and other forms of abuse.

What makes the book vital for both women and men is its clarity about scale and priority. While public discourse fixates on abstract AI fears—job displacement, political deepfakes, robot overlords—Bates redirects our attention to immediate, documented harm. Ninety-six percent of deepfakes are nonconsensual pornography; ninety-nine percent feature women. These aren't hypothetical future risks but present-day realities, enabled by the same technologies celebrated for their democratic potential and creative possibilities.

The harm Bates documents is not abstract. She describes the "out-of-body experience" of seeing realistic pornographic deepfakes created from her own image, the physical responses—sweating, racing heart—that virtual sexual assault can trigger, and the ways AI girlfriends are programmed to acquiesce to increasingly violent scenarios. Through case studies ranging from Spanish schoolgirls targeted by classmates to prominent women journalists silenced by coordinated abuse campaigns, she demonstrates how digital violations create real psychological trauma, professional consequences, and social isolation.

The current political backdrop underscores that urgency. Written before the current U.S. administration's visible dismantling of regulatory bodies and its apparent indifference toward proactive AI oversight, the book already warns that government inaction will allow these abuses to metastasize. In the present climate, Bates's call for robust, pre-emptive regulation feels even more prescient—and more at risk of being ignored.

Bates traces these modern abuses to deeper historical patterns, connecting contemporary sex robots to the Pygmalion myth and current image-based abuse to nineteenth-century scandals. This historical grounding strengthens her central argument: that existing "inequalities and oppression of our current society are being baked into" technological foundations. The problem isn't technological progress itself but how that progress amplifies age-old patterns of control and dehumanization.

The book's most powerful sections examine not individual bad actors but systemic failures. Tech companies prioritize "astronomical profits" over user safety. The overwhelmingly white, male, and profit-driven tech industry that is designing AI systems fails to anticipate or address harms disproportionately affecting women and minorities. Moderation at scale becomes "practically impossible," but only after platforms have already been built and deployed. The result is what Bates calls a pattern where "women's suffering" becomes "useful data points" for product improvement rather than preventing harm.

"The New Age of Sexism" is not comfortable reading, nor should it be. Bates insists on systemic change—diverse development teams, equity-by-design principles, criminal justice reform, and comprehensive education that tackles misogyny at its roots. The choice she presents is stark—act now, or accept a future in which gendered abuse is not only tolerated but engineered into the very systems that run our lives.

"The New Age of Sexism" provides a compelling exposé and a call to action. It is a necessary reckoning with the gap between the promise of innovation and its current reality, as well as a meticulously documented, vital argument for taking the harms of technology seriously — because they are already here and already causing damage.

This review is based on an advance reader copy provided by NetGalley and Sourcebooks.

Thank you to Laura Bates, Sourcebooks, and Netgalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review (unpaid).

A remarkable look into the terrible future we are having towards. The fear of 1984 & The Handmaid's Tale but with the hard facts to back it up included.

I have devoured all of Laura Bates' books and this one was no exception. As someone who has little knowledge of AI, Bates done a great job of explaining the new technologies in an understandable way and the narrative did not get lost in jargon. The implications of these technologies she highlights for women and marginalised groups hit me like a tonne of bricks. So many things I hadn't thought about, this book is a real eye opener!

In The New Age of Sexism, Laura Bates explores how, in the age of technology, sexism is evolving online through AI, deepfakes, the Metaverse, and more. From AI chatbots to cyber brothels, Bates covers many harrowing facets of the new age of sexism.

This was hard-hitting, well-researched, and stomach-churning. I’m not incredibly well-versed in AI, the Metaverse, etc. and this was a very informative and comprehensive look into the problems arising with new technologies.

Thank you to Laura Bates, Sourcebooks, and NetGalley for the eARC!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5/5)
This nonfiction felt urgent and essential. Laura Bates combines investigative reporting with vivid storytelling about cyberbrothels, AI-generated abuse, and virtual harassment. She brings the horrors of tech‑driven misogyny into sharp relief in ways I hadn’t encountered elsewhere. The structure is clear yet powerful, showing how emerging technologies are reshaping patterns of violence. It’s a harrowing read—but also a much‑needed wake‑up call about what’s already happening now and what we must demand changing.

Laura Bate’s ‘Men Who Hate Women’ exposed the rise of the now prolific ‘manosphere’. Her new book ‘The New Age of Sexism’ moves to unmask the AI and Tech industry and their role in perpetrating and entrenching misogyny. From Deepfakes to scarily realistic sex dolls, Bates’ research uncovers the dark truth behind the glittering promises of technological progress.

This book was of immediate interest to me, particularly as it aligned with my undergraduate dissertation topic, which focused on deepfake intimate image abuse. Bate’s research is much broader, exploring the myriad ways that AI technology puts profit before people, especially when those people are women and ethnic minorities. As always, Bates dives in at the deep end, trying out the technology for herself, rather than accept the rehearsed responses of the male-centric companies behind them. I won’t sugarcoat it, this was a difficult read. I felt sick, i felt scared, but I also felt angry. The message Bates leaves us with is that we should be angry, we should not accept that our new world will inevitably carry biases from the past into the future. Tech companies must be made to clean up their own mess, and it has to happen before it is too late. Read this book, make everyone you know read this book, and continue to fight for meaningful societal change not just technological progress.

‘We’ve arrived at a critical moment. We are building a whole new world, but the inequalities and oppression of our current society are being baked into its very foundations.’

Thank you to NetGalley for the E-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“Mainstream articles about the threat of deepfakes have focused exclusively on political manipulation, electoral interference, privacy concerns, and business impact . . . Research suggest that 96 percent of deepfakes are nonconsensual pornography, 99 percent of which features women.”

I thought I’d find this book depressing. Parts of it were depressing and made me angry, but I also found it fascinating and wanted to highlight practically every sentence.

She talks about how junior high school boys can download an app for free and if they can find a full-body picture of a girl they go to school with, they can click a button and have a picture of what she would look like naked. Every celebrity and political female has deep fake porn of her being raped and in every way made to be denigrated and “put in her place” since all those men on incel forums believe women owe them sex. I remember when someone hacked into the private accounts of Scarlett Johansen and Jennifer Lawrence and even other women shamed them for taking private photos of themselves with their boyfriends. Victim shaming is alive and well and virtually nothing is being done in terms of law enforcement to punish the men who gleefully do their best to defame women. Women in politics have stepped down from their positions because of it. The physical and mental hell many of these girls and women go through is horrific.

The section of sex dolls was illuminating. I remember thinking after watching a true crime documentary of a man who would murder men and keep them around his apartment for months “for company.” At the time I thought, “’maybe a sex doll would be a better idea.” I still think a sex doll is better than murdering a bunch of folks, but the other things she brought up I hadn’t thought about. The horrifying statistic that 30 percent of men would rape if they thought they could get away with it and these dolls are there to never say no to them like pesky real women might.

This is not a fun read. I would really not want to be raising teenagers right now.

NetGalley provided an advance copy of this nonfiction book, which RELEASES AUGUST 19, 2025.

a crucial, eye-opening exploration of how misogyny is being coded into AI and emerging technologies. With thorough research and compelling examples, Bates exposes the hidden dangers these tools pose to women and marginalized communities. This book is a vital read for anyone who wants to understand and challenge the biases shaping our technological future.

An important book. Shocking stories of misogyny being built into AI developments. At times difficult to read and that is why it is important to read. New technologies need to grapple and eradicate the male focused developments, equity for all. Thank you to the author. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

A book that every word needs to be read. Laura Bates brings an alarming but necessary exposè into society's reliance and increases usage of AI. There were things that I was already aware of but with as always with Bates's writing, my mind was opened to issues that I didn't think of. An informative and well researched book that needs to be read by everyone..

In The New Age of Sexism, Laura Bates dives deep into the harms that technological advances are enabling against women and minorities, as well as offering some suggestions for how these harms can be mitigated. It is an insightful read, although I worry that the decision-makers who need to read about these sorts of things are not the type to pick up this book. Regardless, this is an important book for anyone who interacts with AI models to read.

Bates covers many topics about emerging technology in this book, not just AI. She discusses revenge porn, sex robots and cyber brothels as well (although the robots and brothels are beginning to use generative AI as well). I'd heard of Cybrothel, but Bates' exposé of it in this book certainly does not match up with the feel-good advertising the brothel is putting out. I agree with her analysis about the dangers of these brothels inuring men to the true impact of violence against women and making them more likely to be dangerous with real women, sex workers or not. I honestly doubt that the type of man who visits a cyber brothel would be the type to not already be a potential instigator of violence against women, but I see her points that it could encourage their violent tendencies to worsen.

One thing I do wish she had spent more time covering was the impact of these emerging technologies on FTM (female-to-male, or trans male) individuals. There is a considerable amount of discussion about their likely impact on transgender women, but I didn't notice any mention of FTM individuals in the book. I understand that this was likely because the book is about sexism and there is a misconception that FTM people do not experience sexism, but they still do. They are victimized at least as much as MTF individuals, perhaps more because predators are not going to ask a pre-transition FTM person's pronouns before deciding they look like a woman and violating them. There are also FTM sex workers, not just MTF ones. This struck me as odd, since she also discussed racism and bigotry against nonbinary people in the book, so it's clearly not 100% laser-focused on only women. I wish she would have also mentioned more about the environmental impact of generative AI, which disproportionately impacts poorer communities.

All in all, this was an eye-opening book. Laura Bates continues to shine a light on topics that are essential to discuss in our evolving world.

Laura Bates has once again braved deep research into some of the most disturbing phenomena the modern world has to offer.

This is an important book with a lot of detail you will struggle to find elsewhere. It is essential reading for those working in the industries concerned and recommended reading for those raising children in the increasingly AI dominated world.

As someone that has read Laura Bates' work previously, I found this less polished in its delivery. However, I can understand the urgency to publish it before it became outdated may have hindered opportunities to refine these finer details.

I’m very glad I was allowed this copy of this book! I’ve read previous Laura Bates books and they’re always pitched at the right level! This was well explained and well designed and has certainly left me something to think about!