WOMEN OBJECTIFICATION IN AI ‘ART’: THAT END-OF-WEEK FEELING WHEN ...
- Pam Saxby
- Nov 7
- 6 min read
Updated: Nov 9
The past few days have been tough. So, this is the first time I’ve shared my thoughts on women objectification and AI ‘art’ here before writing something for Medium. Tempting as it is to name the Australian-based online community platform that triggered this mini campaign, the timing isn’t right. So, it has been removed from the correspondence below, which will give you some idea of where things now stand. I do have a day job, by the way … I’m a legal journalist in South Africa …
AUSTRALIAN COMPETITION & CONSUMER COMMISSION
Peter Infocentre Public Mailbox <info.centre@accc.gov.au> | Thu, Nov 6, 10:13 PM (23 hours ago) | ||
To me |
Dear Pamela
Thank you for writing to us about BLANK. We have recorded the details of your report.
Below is some information that we hope you will find helpful.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is responsible for the regulation of broadcasting, the internet, radiocommunications and telecommunications.
You can find out about the types of complaints it handles or lodge a complaint on its website or by calling 1300 850 115 for more information.
Not ACCC: issue outside of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010
From the information you have provided, the concerns you have raised appear to fall outside of the laws we administer. The Australian Consumer Law provides Australians with broad consumer protections including the right to truthful and accurate representations, fair treatment and consumer guarantees. You can read more about consumer rights on our website. If you have information that you believe may indicate a breach of these laws, we welcome you to submit it to us.
Your report: what the ACCC does with this information
The ACCC uses reports from the public, as well as other sources of intelligence, to inform our enforcement work. You can read more about how we prioritise our work on our website.
Please note, the ACCC generally does not comment on our work or what we do with the information we receive from reports. We will only contact you again if we require further information.
To keep up-to-date on public announcements from the ACCC, you can subscribe to our email alerts.
We hope the information we have provided is helpful.
Yours sincerely
Peter
Public Information Officer | InfocentreAustralian Competition and Consumer Commission23 Marcus Clarke Street Canberra 2601 | www.accc.gov.auT: 1300 302 502
My response (7 November 2025)
Dear Peter
Thank you for your feedback.
Having visited the Australian Communications & Media Authority website, my sense is that their complaints service focuses on more tangible, technical issues such as broadcasting reception, cabling, labelling, spam and gambling. A search for AI and related issues tended to suggest that they fall outside the authority’s remit.
I do know from a 2012 Australian Law Reform Commission report that provisions for regulating AI image generators may eventually feature in amendments to the Classification of Media Content Act. With that in mind, I shall share my concerns with them.
Meanwhile, as a paying BLANK subscriber, I do believe my rights as a consumer of their services have been violated.
I expressly opted for a safe browsing option in my account settings. BLANK’s classification of scantily clad ‘pin-up girls’ posing suggestively as safe viewing means that those types of images:
are not filtered out during website ‘explore’ page browsing sessions for any subscribers opting for safe viewing, and
are included in the voting phase of official and community-hosted challenges, despite NSFW image entries being prohibited by challenge rules.
As a result, I see these types of images regularly – which I find offensive.
In addition, new subscribers are not notified of the measures in place enabling them to report NSFW images missed by the auto-moderator. To some extent this is covered in guidelines for chat room hosts and a chatroom host handbook, which ChatGPT brought to my attention. However, there are no guidelines for ordinary subscribers. BLANK’s community standards simply refer to the right to report without explaining how this should be done.
Among other things, the 2012 Australian Law Reform Commission report notes that, in the case of “platforms that host millions of hours of user-generated content, it may only be reasonable to expect them to have in place processes to readily identify adult content after it has been published. Major content providers, for example, might have mechanisms that allow users to ‘flag’ content as adult or ‘inappropriate’”.
As you will gather from the remainder of this email and related attachments, the measures available to BLANK users wishing to ‘flag’ NSFW content in daily and community-hosted challenges are far from clear.
Under a section headed “What's allowed, and what's not?” and the sub-heading “NSFW (Not Safe For Work)”, BLANK’s community standards acknowledge that “many young children use BLANK (with and without parental supervision)” and that they “want to keep it safe and appropriate for them”. In that context, surely scantily clad ‘pin-up girls’ posing suggestively should be classified NSFW?
The eSafety Commissioner’s industry Phase 1 Standards (Class 1A and 1B Material) Regulatory Guidance booklet does appear to suggest so – nevertheless acknowledging the complexities of balancing the right to freedom of speech and privacy rights with the right to online safety.
It has taken nearly 12 months to obtain official written communication from BLANK personnel and moderators on the procedures they expect platform users to follow when identifying and reporting NSFW content. This is outlined in the attached document, on which I have copied reviews submitted to TrustPilot and Google.
As you will see from the TrustPilot review, I have now been temporarily suspended from BLANK, having resorted last week to creating and publishing caricatures expressing the frustrations outlined above. BLANK has since removed these images unilaterally. Two downloaded before their unexpected removal are attached, one being animated. Unfortunately, I did not download the others, which depicted a friendly hippo humorously challenging a little red-haired elf (the user I am accused of harassing, thus violating community standards).
I have copies of text correspondence with that user, who blocked me from accessing her gallery during our text exchange. In my caricatures, the hippo asked why – suggesting the elf may have had something to hide. In the description underneath one caricature, I added links to NSFW images in the user’s gallery (which is freely accessible to any browser searching under her pseudonym). Two of the images I used as examples have since been removed from her gallery. The following two remain:
BLANK
BLANK
I also have copies of text exchanges with BLANK moderators involved in the same virtual ‘conversation’, as well as a subsequent one in which the official daily challenge NSFW flag was brought to my attention.
Please be aware that, from the time I lodged my first complaint, my expectation was never that the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission would pursue the matter. The website clearly states that acting on behalf of individual complainants is not part of the Commission’s remit. Instead, my complaints were made to alert the Commission to a broader problem affecting BLANK platform users opting for safe browsing and viewing.
With that in mind, may I appeal to you please to ensure that the information I provided in each report and in this email is shared with other Australian government agencies developing regulations for dealing with AI-generated art.
Sincerely
Pam Saxby
PROTEST IMAGE (animated and since removed unilaterally from my ‘gallery’)
HIPPO PROTEST IMAGE (since removed unilaterally from my ‘gallery’)
COLLECTIVE SHOUT (Australian NGO)
Me (7 November 2025)
Hi, Caitlin
I live in South Africa, where I'm a legal journalist focusing on local public policy and legislative developments with implications for domestic and international investors. As part of my work for one client, I run their social media accounts – posting alerts with images illustrating the latest news. Which is why, in October 2024, I joined an online international AI text-to-image community 'art' platform based in Cairns. I wanted to generate higher quality, more focused images than were available from ChatGPT and similar services.
It was only when I had mastered the necessary word prompting skills to enter the platform's numerous challenges/competitions that I began to realise how many adult/NSFW images are published without being appropriately tagged/labelled. This came as a shock, especially because subscriber account settings include a 'safe browsing' option, which I activated as soon as I joined the platform.
It is possible to report unlabelled/untagged adult/NSFW content encountered during a browsing session using a facility embedded in each published image. However, when that type of image appears during the voting phase for challenges/competitions the reporting process is more complicated and not consistently applied.
I have copies of extensive correspondence with platform personnel and moderators among other things finally acknowledging (during the past fortnight) that there are flaws in the adult/NSFW content reporting system – and also conceding that an exception is made for artistically portrayed images of scantily clad 'pin-up girls' posing suggestively.
The platform does not classify that type of image as NSFW, hence the regular appearance of scantily clad 'pin-up girls' during the challenge/competition voting process and in browsing sessions. Yet the platform's community standards make no mention of this. Neither is the complex NSFW/adult content reporting system explained.
I have brought this to the attention of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission in a series of reports to which I have just received an interim response. They seem to be the only government agency/watchdog available to complainants who are not Australian residents.
Please let me know if you believe this falls within your mandate and would like me to disclose the name of the Australian company owning and running the platform. All related correspondence could then be made available.
Sincerely
Pam Saxby