David v. Goliath in the Digital Age: Safeguarding Women's Rights from AI's Power

This doctrinal article examines the confrontation between international human rights frameworks (specifically the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, CEDAW) and the immense economic and technological leverage of transnational corporations deploying Artificial Intelligence Systems (AIS).

The research analyzes the critical threats posed by AI to equality and non-discrimination:

• Indirect discrimination stemming from the systemic underrepresentation and exclusion of women across the AI value chain;
• Direct discrimination emerging during deployment through data, cognitive, and algorithmic biases with severe intersectional impacts;
• Emerging digital harms, including online harassment, non-consensual image and deepfake manipulation, and intrusive surveillance of reproductive autonomy.

While framing CEDAW as a "living instrument" (highlighting initiatives such as General Recommendation No. 40), the paper underscores the shortcomings of existing programmatic standards when confronted with technical complexities (fairness benchmarks, dataset transparency, trade secrecy, and extraterritorial enforcement). The author advocates for a dedicated CEDAW General Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence to define State due diligence obligations and establish direct human rights accountability for tech conglomerates.