Austrian MEP Urges EU Enforcement After Nude Deepfakes

Schilling said she learned last month that nude deepfakes of herself were circulating online. When she opened the links, she found images from one of her first press conferences, digitally altered to remove her clothing.

“I felt disgusted,” she said. “I remember how nervous I was and how much I had prepared for the press conference. And then to see someone using this image in a way aimed at harming and humiliating me was really hard to grasp.”

According to a report by Agora Digitale Transformation (ADT), 50 MEPs, 46 of them women, have been targeted by sexualised deepfakes. The Berlin-based thinktank, which alerted Schilling to the images online, said the finding showed deepfake pornography had become a “systemic threat to women in European politics”.

An earlier ADT report found that 138 female parliamentarians from 22 EU countries had been affected and that women were 33 times more likely than male colleagues to be depicted in or associated with deepfake pornography.

Schilling described the images as a form of “digital violence against women” added to the sexist abuse, harassment and violence women in politics already face. She said the result was a potent threat to democracy: “These things make going into politics even harder than it is already. Just imagine what would happen to our society if more and more women disappear from public life.”

She said she had spoken to some of the other female MEPs targeted, but they had expressed fears about coming forward. “But there’s nothing to be ashamed of. People misused your photos, you did nothing wrong,” she said. “And I think that’s the moment when you say: ‘OK, this has to stop.’”

Schilling and German Green MEP Terry Reintke initiated a letter to the EU, signed by 119 MEPs, calling on officials to ensure that a forthcoming ban on apps and websites that use AI to undress women, due to take effect across the EU on 2 December, is paired with mechanisms capable of enforcing the prohibition. “A ban on paper protects no one until it is enforced,” the letter said, pointing to widespread use of “nudifier” apps that can undress photos of women with one click.

The letter said the purpose of such images is humiliation and control over women’s bodies and that their effect is to make public life more hostile for female politicians. “Every young woman considering a political career now must factor in that this could happen to her,” it said.

Schilling said the aim was to push national authorities to close loopholes or workarounds that would allow the apps to continue operating in the EU. “We were stripped naked without our consent,” she said. “This cannot become the new normal.” She said she had decided to speak up in the hope that sharing her story would convince member states to crack down on tech companies for which this kind of digital violence could be a viable business model.

“It’s quite simple,” she said. “Every woman who wants to run for office should be able to do so without being afraid of being undressed against her will.”