There was an insistent knock at the door. This in itself was startling – it was the winter of 2020 and we hadn't yet returned to socialising indoors after lockdown. When I answered, I was surprised to see a male acquaintance of mine. He said he needed to speak to me. I knew it was something unprecedented because he asked to come in. He told me to sit down. That's when the adrenaline started coursing through me – people only suggest that when they're about to deliver bad news.

Image-based abuse – when someone takes, shares or threatens to share nude, semi-nude or sexual images or video without consent – has become a growing issue, experienced by 1 in 3 Australians surveyed in 2019. Lead researcher behind the creation of'Umibot', Professor Nicola Henry from RMIT's Social and Global Studies Centre, said'deepfake' content (fake videos or images generated using AI), incidents where people are pressured into creating sexual content and being sent unsolicited sexual images or videos also count as image-based abuse. "It's a huge violation of trust that's designed to shame, punish or humiliate. It's often a way for perpetrators to exert power and control over others," said Henry, who is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. "A lot of victim-survivors we talked to just want the issue to go away and the content to be taken down or removed but often they don't know where to go for help."