Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is pursuing compensation totaling Ksh.14.3 million ($ 108,200) in a civil lawsuit following the dissemination of pornographic deepfake content featuring her likeness on the internet.
Scheduled to testify in a Sardinian court on July 2, Meloni is the plaintiff in a civil case against two individuals accused of manipulating her image onto the bodies of adult film actors and distributing the resulting videos on a pornographic website based in the United States in 2020.
The defendants, a 40-year-old man and his 73-year-old father, remain unidentified to the public. Alongside the civil lawsuit initiated by Meloni, they face criminal defamation charges.
Law enforcement authorities managed to trace the perpetrators using their mobile phones, which were employed to generate and share numerous pornographic videos and images.
During the period when the illicit videos were circulating, Meloni, aged 47, was actively campaigning to become prime minister as the leader of the Brothers of Italy party. She ultimately assumed office as prime minister in 2022 following a resounding electoral victory.
According to the criminal complaint, the offending images remained online for several months and garnered views from millions of individuals. Some of these images persist in circulation on the internet.
