Sephora Italy raises awareness of gender-based violence in three AI-driven short films

Created by Media.Monks and directed by Milan-based filmmaker Viola Foladorshare, the ‘mAI colpevoli’ campaign (which roughly translates to ‘never guilty‘) launched for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 28.

The team asked ChatGPT’s generative AI to create three distinct stories of gender-based violence from the perspective of the victims based on online opinions.

The result was three different scenarios, including one woman grappling with domestic abuse, another subjected to workplace harassment and another facing sexual assault in a bar.

Each of the victims in the videos ends up blaming themselves in a phenomenon called ‘victim blaming,‘ which is defined as the assigning of responsibility for harm to the person who suffered it.

“AI proceeds through imitation, through assimilation. In a way, it’s like an alien arriving on planet Earth and learning from what it sees,” commented Felice Arborea, head of content at Media.Monks. “In our project, artificial intelligence is the ‘alien’ that deduces a cultural system (a mindset, a language) regarding the issue of violence against women. And it interprets it with a sense of ‘blaming women.’”

‘mAI colpevoli‘ also supports the Pangea ETS Foundation, a non-profit that has worked to promote the economic and social development of women, their families and their communities since 2002.

The videos are currently live on Sephora Italy’s Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube pages.

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