“I Can Defend Myself, Others Cannot”: Meloni’s Stark Warning on AI Fakes: And talking about artificial intelligence, it was sold as the future. But as big tech pours billions into building more powerful AI, it has also unleashed a dangerous trend of sexualized deep fakes, fake news, AI driven abuse.
The Target: Giorgia Meloni
This week, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni became its latest target. Fake and fabricated AI generated sexualized images of Meloni went viral online misleading users and that triggered abuse as well. On Tuesday, the Italian prime minister posted on her social media accounts one of the fake AI generated pictures that she said had been circulating in recent days.
PM Giorgia Meloni: “Deep fakes are a dangerous tool because they can deceive, manipulate, and target anyone. I can defend myself. Many others cannot. Check before you believe and believe before you share because today it’s happening to me. Tomorrow it could happen to anyone.”
The Italian prime minister has called it what it is—a dangerous tool of manipulation. And she’s right because this is how easily AI can now be used to humiliate, exploit, and weaponize women digitally.
A History of Digital Abuse
But doctored sexualized images of Giorgia Meloni are not new. They’ve surfaced before as well last year. It appeared on a pornographic website that featured altered images of high-profile women. In 2024, Meloni sued two men for €100,000 after fake sexual videos of her were uploaded to a US-based porn site.
The Italian government has responded to this threat. A law criminalizing deep fakes that cause unjust harm to the person depicted was passed. And yet this has happened again. That says everything because for all the promises around AI as the technology of tomorrow, far less attention has gone into the damage it can already cause today. And absolutely no attention has gone into the humiliation, the stigma, the trauma that it can cause.
The Scale of Industrial Exploitation
Meloni is the prime minister of Italy. She has the power, she has the ability to fight back. Millions of others do not have that privilege and for them a fake image can become a real nightmare. This is not just about one leader; across the world, female politicians, public figures, journalists and ordinary women are increasingly being targeted by AI generated deep fake pornography and sexualized fake imagery. Their bodies are being digitally manipulated without consent, without control, and often without recourse. What’s worse, what happens online can quickly spill into real life. It can escalate, AIdriven abuse does not end with a fake image. It can open the door to blackmail, stalking, threats, harassment, real world damage.
Take Grok for example.
The Shocking Stats on AI-Generated Content:
Research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate regarding the AI tool Grok (integrated into X) revealed alarming data between late December 2025 and early January 2026:
- Total Images: Estimated 3 million sexualized images generated.
- Timeline: All this happened within just an 11-day period.
- Pace: An estimated average pace of 190 images per minute.
Yes, the user may be the one typing the prompt, but it is the platform that puts such powerful AI tools in someone’s hand. With features that can be exploited at the click of a button, they benefit from the traffic generating revenue.
Global Impact on Women
Knowing these numbers, can anyone call this just cyber bullying? No. This is industrial scale digital exploitation.
- Personal Experience: One global survey found 38% of women have personally experienced online violence.
- Witnesses: 85% of women online have witnessed digital violence against others.
- The Gender Gap: According to research, 90 to 95% of all online deepfakes are non-consensual pornographic images, and around 90% depict women.
Governments must move faster with guardrails than the companies building these AI tools.
