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.
‘I felt disgusted’
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).
Systemic threat to women in politics
The Berlin-based thinktank, which alerted Schilling to the presence of the images online, said the finding laid bare how 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 their male colleagues to be depicted in or associated with deepfake pornography.
Schilling described the images as a form of “digital violence against women” piled on top of the already disproportionate amount of sexist abuse, harassment and violence that women in politics faced. The result was a potent threat to democracy, she said: “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.”
Calls for enforcement of ban
Schilling 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.’”
The sentiment was captured in a recent letter to the EU initiated by Schilling and the German Green MEP Terry Reintke. Signed by 119 MEPs, it called on officials to ensure that a forthcoming ban on apps and websites that use AI to undress women, scheduled to take effect across the EU on 2 December, would be paired with mechanisms capable of enforcing the prohibition.
“A ban on paper protects no one until it is enforced,” the letter said, pointing to the widespread use of “nudifier” apps in which photos of women can be undressed with just one click. “Its purpose is humiliation and control over women’s bodies, and its effect is to make public life more hostile for female politicians,” the letter said. “Every young woman considering a political career now must factor in that this could happen to her.”
Schilling said the aim was to push national authorities to close any loopholes or workarounds that would allow the apps to continue to function in the EU. “We were stripped naked without our consent,” she said. “This cannot become the new normal.”
The call for action was why she had decided to speak up, she said, in the hope that sharing her story would convince member states to crack down on tech companies for which this sort 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.”
