The price to be paid for making films in Iran
Celebrated Iranian film director Jafar Panahi talks to Index about his latest film It was Just an Accident – released in UK cinemas from 5 December – and explains why despite being imprisoned and censored, he won’t stop making movies in his home country
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MAGA 101: Inside Trump’s fast-track masterclass in undermining academic freedom
A report on the impact of the Trump administration’s assault on research and teaching in the United States and what the future might hold for free ...
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Frank Furedi: The new face of right-wing free speech
Index talks to the director of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium which is hosting a conference this week entitled the Battle for the Soul of Europe
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Ukraine: Trump’s peace plan is none of those three things
The 28-point outline has clear Russian origins and will not end the war plus Zelensky has his own problems
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Dissidents have started challenging Saudi Arabia and Bahrain through the UK courts
Victims of unlawful state surveillance are refusing to back down
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Spotlight: Remembering Sir Tom Stoppard
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Identity politics: words can, and do, hurt
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less, and that includes pronouns"
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Cancel culture, junk journalism and the dissident tradition
A wide-ranging interview with the playwright, screenwriter and Index on Censorship patron Sir Tom Stoppard
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Belarus Free Theatre: “Dictators are scared of a strong mutual position”
Belarus Free Theatre have been using their creative and subversive art to protest the dictatorial rule of Aleksandr Lukashenko for over a decade.
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Tom Stoppard on the Writers in Prison Committee
The playwright on why he would never have been a writer in prison – and the importance of communicating with those who are
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MAGAZINE
LATEST ISSUE: VOLUME 54.03 Autumn 2025
Truth, trust & tricksters: Free expression in the age of AI
It is difficult to spend a day without using artificial intelligence. Whether we look up a fact on Google or use our car’s navigation system, AI is helping to guide us. AI is not human, but is increasingly taking on human characteristics. Want to write a five-year strategy for work? AI can give you the structure. A text to the lover you’re breaking up with, ChatGPT is on hand with the perfect choice of words. Even as I compose this editor’s letter in a Word document, the sinisterly named Copilot – Microsoft’s AI assistant – is hovering in the margin with the tantalising offer that it could do a better job.
So what does it all mean for free expression? We asked a range of writers to explore themes around censorship and AI for this latest issue, and the result is fascinating. Kate Devlin delves into griefbots which are essentially deepfakes of dead people – often with all their unpleasant characteristics removed.
Innocent enough but in the wrong hands they are pernicious. A country’s political hero can be resurrected to encourage causes they would have disavowed were they alive. Ruth Green looks at whether AI has free speech.
In a recent US lawsuit, the owner of a chatbot which had been talking to a teenager, in a sexualised way, before he killed himself, argued that the bot’s communications were covered by the First Amendment. Luckily the judge threw the case out.
Meanwhile Timandra Harkness examines how AI can trawl social media to discover every word you’ve ever written.
Uncensored gallery
Index commissions censored and exiled artists from around the world to illustrate our magazine covers and feature stories. You can view some of their work here