Lena Schilling of Austrian Greens says images are ‘digital violence against women’ and a threat to democracy

Here is the report: Targeted and Ignored. Sexualised Deepfakes of Women MEPs and the Failure of Platform Responses (pdf)

…

An Austrian MEP has spoken out about her experience of being “stripped naked” online without her consent and has urged the EU to take action, as a report found that one in six female MEPs had been targeted by sexualised AI-generated content.

Lena Schilling of the Green party said she had learned last month about nude deepfakes of herself circulating online. When she opened the links, she found herself staring at images from one of her first ever press conferences – but the images had been digitally altered to remove her clothing.

It was a shocking twist on a defining moment of her career. “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.”

Schilling is one of 50 MEPs – 46 of them women – who have been targeted by sexualised deepfakes, according to a report by Agora Digitale Transformation (ADT).

…

Archived