Book review: The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates

Bianca Farthing

This is a difficult, necessary read. One that pushes us to look beyond the usual narratives of innovation and efficiency, and to reckon with what is quietly unfolding beneath the surface of the AI revolution. Laura Bates has written a book that is as urgent as it is uncomfortable, asking us to confront what happens when the deepest inequalities in our society are not only preserved by technology, but scaled and rebranded as progress.

We hear so much about AI’s potential. In education, in healthcare, in business. We are told it will save time, improve outcomes, make life easier. But what happens when the systems being developed are built on data that reflects our worst assumptions about gender, power, and consent? What happens when the loudest voices in AI spaces are those least likely to experience the harms? And what happens when harm itself becomes ambient, coded, automated, and ever harder to see?

Bates offers no easy answers. Instead, she takes us into the spaces where these questions matter most. She explores the rise of deepfake pornography and virtual cyber brothels. She speaks to schools in the grip of online abuse, where pupils are navigating a world of chatbots, influencer pipelines, and AI-generated content that blurs the boundaries between reality and manipulation. She tests systems that can be prompted to simulate degrading behaviour or repeat violent tropes. And all of it is presented not as anomaly, but as infrastructure. This is not the glitch. This is the system working as intended.

There is a thread that runs quietly throughout the book. What does this mean for the next generation? For children and young people trying to make sense of relationships, identity, and power in digital spaces shaped by logics of profit and platform growth? Bates is clear. These technologies are not gender-blind. They are not neutral. They reflect the values and power dynamics of the world that builds them, and too often, that world still treats female safety as optional.

What feels most striking is how far we have let this drift. As Bates notes, while regulatory and policy conversations stall or remain fixated on economic opportunity, the everyday lives of young people are being shaped in real time by technologies designed without them in mind. She reminds us that misogyny is no longer something you stumble across online. It is something you are targeted with, pushed toward, and taught. Sometimes by machines, sometimes by people using them.

Two lines in particular remain with me:

“We are at risk of creating yet another world in which some people are predators and others are prey.”

“If we continue on our current trajectory, we will simply be creating an ever-more elaborately gilded cage for those who society has failed before, and will go on to fail again and again.”

This is not a book about resisting technology. It is about resisting harm disguised as progress. It asks us to look closely, to ask harder questions, and to stop pretending that the future we are building is inevitable. We have choices. But only if we are willing to act.

The New Age of Sexism is an essential read for educators, technologists, policymakers, and anyone who believes in equity. It will leave you unsettled, and that is the point.