Artificial intelligence is already reshaping LGBTQ+ people’s lived experiences—from access to work to how we find connection and love. For queer communities, where connection has often come with risk, uncertainty and courage, systems that promise frictionless intimacy or predict our identities or too easily slide in surveillance raise profound questions.
AI does hold real promise—from supporting mental health to helping people navigate disclosure—but it also creates new risks when intimacy, identity and vulnerability become sites of extraction and profit.
LGBTQ+ communities must not be treated as testing grounds for unregulated technologies. We need innovation that supports human dignity—not systems that replace or exploit it. Inclusive governance, grounded in rights, accountability and meaningful community participation, is essential to ensure these tools enhance wellbeing and our flourishing rather than amplify harm.”
Michael Bąk
How can communities working on health, rights and wellbeing leverage AI for their work, particularly during the current political and funding climate
In the current political and funding climate, communities working on health, rights and wellbeing should use AI less for hype and more for resilience. The most valuable uses are the ones that help small teams protect capacity, strengthen evidence, widen access to trusted information, and support frontline workers without replacing human care. But for LGBTQ+ communities especially, every use of AI has to be grounded in rights, safety, and meaningful community participation — because in a hostile environment, efficiency without governance can create new harms as easily as new opportunities.”
The practical answer is: communities working on health, rights and wellbeing should leverage AI in ways that do three things at once
- reduce costs,
- strengthen evidence, and
- deepen human relationships rather than replace them.
Guidance from OECD and UNDP is consistent on the need for strong guardrails, meaningful engagement, and human-rights-based risk assessment when deploying AI.
Are there aspects of AI that can be harmful to those working on LGBTQI, and HIV? How can communities overcome this?
Yes—there are real risks, and they are amplified for LGBTQI and HIV communities because these technologies intersect with existing stigma, isolation and inequality. We’re seeing the rise of systems that can infer identity, target vulnerability and even simulate intimacy—often in ways designed to maximise engagement rather than wellbeing.
The danger is not just bias or misinformation, but the gradual normalisation of surveillance, the commodification of loneliness, and the substitution of human care with systems that cannot be accountable.
We are also seeing the rise of systems that sell synthetic intimacy—‘perfect’ companions designed to respond, affirm and never reject. For communities already navigating stigma, loneliness and risk, this is not a harmless innovation. It is the monetisation of vulnerability. These systems offer connection without uncertainty and affection without reciprocity, but in doing so they risk eroding something fundamental: our agency, our capacity to navigate rejection and desire, and the deeply human experience of building connection with another person who can choose us—or not. That trade-off should concern us all.
The way forward is not to reject AI, but to be deliberate: use it in bounded, community-controlled ways, protect sensitive data, and ensure that governance is shaped by the people most affected. Because for our communities, the question is not just what AI can do—but what it should never be allowed to do.
APCOM’s current strategy, RELENTLESS, has a pillar specifically on innovations and AI. What are your suggestions for its up-coming annual Community Summit for sessions on AI? And who should we bring into the conversation?
If APCOM is serious about innovation under RELENTLESS, then the Community Summit should not just ask what AI can do for us—but what kind of technological future we want to build for our communities. That means creating space not only for tools and pilots, but for critical conversations about power, safety, intimacy, and accountability.
We also need to create space for conversations that may feel uncomfortable but are necessary—particularly around the rise of AI systems that simulate intimacy and target vulnerable users. For LGBTQ+ communities, this is not just a technological issue but a human one. When connection becomes something that can be engineered, optimised and sold, there are very real impacts on agency, to vulnerability, and to the deeply human experience of building relationships with one another. The Summit should not shy away from these questions.
RELENTLESS commits APCOM to innovation—but innovation must be shaped by the values the organisation already holds: dignity, participation, and community leadership. The Community Summit is an opportunity not just to explore AI, but to define what responsible, community-led AI looks like in our region—and to ensure that LGBTQ+ communities are not simply users of these technologies, but authors of how they are designed, governed and deployed.
About Michael:
Michael Bąk is an international policy and digital rights expert with over 25 years of experience across public policy, technology governance, freedom of expression, and human rights. He has held senior leadership roles with USAID, the United Nations, and Meta (Facebook), where he served as the first Public Policy Lead for Thailand and regional institutions. He is the former Executive Director of the Paris-based Forum on Information & Democracy, and currently serves as Global Advisor, Asia, at the Ethical AI Alliance, Head of Policy & Network at AI Safety Asia, and Senior Non-Resident Visiting Fellow (Cyber Policy) at the NYU Center for Global Affairs.
Michael has worked extensively with LGBTQ+ communities across Asia and the Pacific. He created and developed the landmark Being LGBTI in Asia initiative, one of the first UN-supported regional programmes focused on SOGIESC rights, and continues to support community-led approaches to health, rights, and inclusion. His work increasingly focuses on how artificial intelligence and emerging technologies shape the lived experiences of marginalised communities—particularly in contexts marked by stigma, inequality, and shrinking civic space.
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