‘Not a way to live’: AI is fueling violent threats against women judges

Content warning: This article describes a simulation of violence against a public official.

Two years have passed, but Judge Jennifer Johnson cannot erase the death threat from her mind. The violent, 3-minute video appeared on TikTok in September 2023 — a frightening example of how the expansion of AI technology has led to growing threats against women in public office. 

Johnson, who oversees cases in Dixie County, Florida, spoke publicly about the threat for the first time last week, showing a 40-second clip during a forum that gathered women state judges to discuss security concerns. The video imitates the style of the popular game Grand Theft Auto, which has been widely criticized for more than two decades for allowing players to beat women and sex workers.

In the clip, an animated man wearing a red, white and blue face mask can be seen following a woman on the street before he attacks her with a hatchet. After several blows from the weapon, he then draws a gun and shoots her multiple times in the head while onlookers scream in the background.

“Judge Johnson, let’s bury the hatchet,” a voiceover states, as the explicitly violent attack plays out.

“That video is still difficult to watch, especially thinking about my children that saw that on social media,” Johnson said during the forum, hosted by Speak Up for Justice, a group formed to advocate for judicial independence and security. 

Johnson went on to add that in the full video “he named me. He talked about my divorce, my remarriage, my name change, my children, where I live and where I work. And so it was a very scary time for me and my family.”

There’s no data capturing the full scope of how AI is affecting women judges specifically, but one study published last year by The American Sunlight Project (ASP) sheds light on how this is affecting women in Congress. Their team identified tens of thousands of sexually explicit AI-generated images and videos depicting 26 senators and members of Congress, according to the report. 

Other research suggests that the growth of AI technology has led to rising threats against public figures at all levels. This includes creating “deepfake” images, videos, or audio that have been manipulated to imitate a person’s likeness and be passed off as real. AI software can also be used to track people’s social media activity or scan for personal phone numbers or home addresses.

The federal Take It Down Act, signed into law in May, enacts criminal penalties for “the nonconsensual online publication of intimate visual depictions of individuals, both authentic and computer-generated.” However, it’s unclear how existing federal law applies to AI-generated threats like what Johnson received, which did not appear to be sexual.

Federal judges have their own specific legal protections and security benefits like the U.S. Marshals Service, which employs officers providing a range of security support, including courthouse and residential safety measures, as well as personal surveillance when threats are identified. The Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act of 2021 — named after the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered in 2020 — prohibits federal agencies and private businesses from publicly posting certain personal details like the home addresses of federal judges.

But state judges like Johnson do not have access to the U.S. Marshals Service. State law also determines the law enforcement response to the threats they receive and whether personal information like addresses and phone numbers can be shielded from the public.

Johnson said she immediately reported her death threat to the FBI, her local sheriff and to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “The response that I got was ‘Judge, it’s usually the ones that bark, don’t bite,” she recalled.

She connected with friends who knew several retired U.S. Marshals who helped her develop a safety plan to keep her family safe. 

“But there was nowhere to report it to really, other than my local sheriff’s office, which is very rural, and I would say that most sheriff’s offices, at least half in the state of Florida and many across our nation, are very rural,” Johnson said.

She said it took five months before the threat was taken seriously by law enforcement. Ultimately, the man who made the threatening video went to trial in November 2024 and was convicted, receiving the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

This year, a bipartisan group of senators introduced the “Countering Threats and Attacks on Our Judges Act” that, if enacted, would create a judicial intelligence threat and resource center to provide technical assistance and training around security for state judges.

Currently, the country has a patchwork of different laws addressing threats and harassment for the general public, including judges. Every state has some variation of a law that criminalizes a “written or electronic threat to kill,” but their courts’ handling of AI-generated content remains inconsistent because of challenges determining which parties may be legally liable and establishing criminal intent.

According to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, “nearly 100 AI-related bills were passed in 2024, and more than 1,000 have been introduced across the country during the 2025 legislative sessions.” Some of these address content involving children; others are specific to nonconsensual sexual content.

Judges also experience other forms of harassment online and in person. During the Thursday forum, Judge Carroll Kelly in Miami described a cyberattack where she received tens of thousands of emails within a few hours, forcing her to temporarily pause her work. 

“Basically my entire court got shut down. I couldn’t receive emails from anybody. They had to delete all of them. I have no idea which emails I missed. You know, my work was totally impacted,” she said. Her credit card and American Airlines accounts also appeared to be hacked, she added.

Colorado state Supreme Court Chief Justice Monica Márquez said justices on her court have experienced doxxing, the publishing of home addresses; and swatting, making a false emergency call in order to draw a SWAT team of armed police to someone’s home. Márquez, who is openly gay, said that she also received calls and texts to her personal phone that “overtly referred to sexual violence, were overtly homophobic.”

State judges participated in the forum as part of a larger movement to call attention to rising threats and harassment against federal, state and local judges over the last decade. Women judges in particular have been the most public faces calling for broader protections.

“It’s scary to think that it’s something that we have to do because of our public service role,” Johnson said. “To have to pay attention and not sit near a door in a restaurant or move to the other side of the church where you don’t normally sit and to always be looking over your shoulder and concerned, it is just not a way to live.”