“Nothing is free!” a Belville detective says after hearing about the Gender Rights in Tech (GRIT) app to protect women and children from gender-based violence that has supported hundreds of survivors after its launch mid-pandemic. But this app — with a map of nearby support services and a panic button to summon free armed response — costs users nothing, and nor does talking to friendly AI chatbot Zuzi on chatgbv.
Leonora Tima, who founded GRIT (formerly known as Kwanele) to find tech solutions to GBV, led the development of the award-winning app. In an era of surging AI — where tech is increasingly being wielded against women, including so-called revenge porn — GRIT is a knight in AI armour.
“We’ve seen a huge increase in tech-facilitated, image-based sexual abuse, which can turn into rape and sextortion,” said Tima. Up to 10 cases are reported a week, though Tima said the number went up over the festive season.
Using tech to provide protection against GBV and referrals for survivor support are priorities for Tima and she gets texts like “the app saved my life yesterday”. The catalyst for her was the death four years ago of a 19-year-old niece in her family, who was nine months pregnant. Her body was found on the side of the N2.
GRIT operations manager Ronel Koekemoer said: “A lot of people are sceptical about using AI to combat GBV. They ask ‘how does the app work?’ Or ‘must I pay?’ They think emergency response is reserved for the elite and it is not (GRIT sponsors their subscription).”
GRIT to the rescue
A 21-year-old woman from a North West village was impressed at the speed of response. “The armed response on the app helped me. Once I heard movement in my yard at night and I was scared. I pressed the panic button and the armed response came quickly,” she said.
Another woman from the same village, who was being harassed by a stalker who was out on bail, also turned to GRIT. She recorded the man’s calls and videos, such as the smashing her possessions, on the GRIT app — which has a vault for storing images, audio and videos of GBV for up to 10 years — and this helped to secure a warrant of arrest.
For the 16 Days of Activism campaign, GRIT community facilitator Kwenzokuhle Khoza and Koekemoer this week visited hospital-based Thuthuzela Care Centres — one-stop facilities for victims of rape — police stations, the Wynberg sexual offences court and domestic violence courts in Cape Town to share details about the GBV app.
“We have had a spike in students coming in now that exams are over,” said a Thuthuzela counsellor. Those who Khoza and Koekemoer met — counsellors, nurses, police officers, a court clerk and a prosecutor — were interested in hearing about the app while raising questions about the practicalities.
When women understand what the app offers, they install it, said Khoza, a film graduate and videographer. GRIT’s users soared from 800 to 11,000 in a few months after she made a TikTok video that went viral, attracting more than 50,000 likes.
A 34-year-old woman in Johannesburg said she heard about the app during a GBV-awareness event last year and relied on it to exit a long, abusive marriage.
“This app gave me a sense of security and peace of mind during helpless moments. Its presence reminded me that support and resources are available for GBV survivors,” she said.
“The team was helpful in my divorce proceedings. Ronel was there to guide and assist me every step of the way and this made a huge difference... I am incredibly grateful for Kwanele’s life-changing support,” said the woman, originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Rural and vulnerable populations are among the keenest users of the GRIT app, said Koekemoer. “Tech adoption is high among people with disabilities because it can make spaces more accessible in a world that does not cater to the accessibility needs of everyone... It is much higher among undocumented people or sex workers than you would expect.”
Training Zuzi, a youth-friendly AI chatbot
These communities are among those training the AI chatbot Zuzi in the “slang people use in the township”, key words and phrases. For instance, in KwaZulu-Natal “return to sender” means abortion.
Across all the provinces, village elders, street-smart students and vulnerable groups such as sex workers are among some 2,000 co-creators of Zuzi, which is still in its beta testing phase.
Award-winning software engineer Emily Springer commended GRIT for its conversational chatbot “to help GBV survivors navigate their choices and emotions, away from the shaming responses they often receive when trying to access services through formal channels (think a police officer telling you they don’t believe you)”.
Aunt Zuzi is the “most rocking example of participatory AI... [and] of building AI systems from the community up, rather than technology down”, said Springer. Last month GRIT won the 2024 Africa Tech Festival AIConics award, beating other contenders such as Vodacom, Meta and Vox for the prize.
Zuzi is still being trained. Sex workers from Eswatini will participate in a workshop in Cape Town tomorrow at which they will interact with Zuzi on tablets and phones and write down the questions they want to ask it.
We’ve seen a huge increase in tech-facilitated GBV like image-based sexual abuse, which can turn into rape and sextortion
— Leonora Tima, MD of Gender Rights in Tech
In this way the GRIT team gets feedback on the prompts to improve the app’s performance. Khoza said they had learnt the app could be too abrupt. “Zuzi was too quick to direct people to other services instead of chatting to people about what they were going through,” she said of the critical feedback. “We want the good and the bad feedback. We want to the bad more so we know what to fix.”
The GRIT team take criticisms to heart and research underpins all their operations. Before Tima built the app, the team did eight months of research in four schools in communities in the Western and Eastern Cape.
Connecting GBV survivors to legal services, including some 20 pro bono lawyers, is another key element of their work and GRIT has provided court support in more than 200 cases to date, both criminal and civil.
On tech-facilitated GBV, the organisation has helped to open more than 100 cases. “The problem is the implementation is lacklustre. Survivors can be told ‘we only deal with real survivors’ or physical assault,” said Koekemoer, noting that online attacks can trigger post-traumatic-stress disorder, feelings of shame, victim-blaming and self-harm.
Last month, the high court in Johannesburg handed down a groundbreaking ruling in a case of image-based sexual abuse, awarding R3.5m to a woman whose intimate images were shared online by her ex-lover.
The ascendancy of AI is a double-edged sword on the battlefield of GBV. The GRIT team are on the front line, modern-day Amazons using code and words to defend the most vulnerable from harm.
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