Alarming rise of AI-generated Islamophobic images on Indian social media: Report

A recent reportpublished by the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate (CSOH) documented the alarming rise of AI-generated images to create an Islamophobic rhetoric in India.

Authored by Nabiya Khan, Aishik Saha and Zenith Khan, the report highlights the role of AI-generated images in shaping anti-Muslim visual hate content in the digital landscape. It states that while there has been an in-depth documentation through studies, reports, and journalistic investigations, the use of AI-generated visuals with the sole purpose of dehumanising Muslims has seldom been studied or analysed.

It studied 1,326 publicly available AI-generated Islamophobic posts between May 2023 and May 2025 from 297 accounts across various social media platforms, with a large engagement.

According to the report, there were four main categories revealed upon analysis: the sexualisation of Muslim women, exclusionary and dehumanising rhetoric, conspiratorial narratives, and the aestheticisation of violence.

With an estimated 22 million AI users in India, the report says that such images are being used as a powerful tool to target religious minorities and Dalit communities.

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Nabiya Khan, co-researcher of the report, shares that far-right-wing media outlets and networks use AI-generated images as “an amplifier” to feed Islamophobic content on Indian social media platforms.

“These tools made old prejudices scalable, are faster and cheaper, and even harder to trace. Existing laws are insufficient for governing or regulating this content,” Khan was quoted by Maktoob Media.

Whether it be the Assam BJP’s apparent Islamophobic video depicting a dystopian future for the state or WhatsApp forwards, the report indicates that AI-generated imagery in India is “worrisome.”

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The report highlights a key finding – AI is not creating new hate, but automating existing hate.

These visuals consistently frame Muslims as “inherently violent.” This is illustrated with images like snakes wearing skull caps, sending a message of “deceptive, dangerous, and deserving of elimination.”

Some images use Ghibli-style art on Instagram, while others hide behind comedy hashtags, presenting themselves as harmless jokes. This makes it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.

Ghibli-style Islamophobic content

Another key finding was the dangerous sexualized depictions of Muslim women. “This category received the highest engagement (6.7M interactions), revealing the gendered character of much Islamophobic propaganda, which fuses misogyny with anti-Muslim hate,” the report states.

“The effect of these images, singularly or cumulatively, is the dehumanisation of Muslim men as hypersexual predators and Muslim families as incestuous or morally corrupted units,” the report adds.

Additionally, conspiracy theories of “love jihad”, “population jihad” and “rail jihad” are used to frame Muslims as perpetrators and a “threat” to Hindu national security. “Such imagery allows Hindu nationalist actors in the political arena to agitate hateful narratives without being fact-checked,” the report states.

Khan emphasised the need for public awareness, stating that critical thinking is a requirement for people to learn to read these images and ask questions such as, “Who benefits from me believing this?”

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