Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni seeking damages of Ksh.14.3M in deepfake porn trial

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is seeking damages of $108,200 (Ksh.14.3 million) in a civil trial after pornographic deepfake videos of her were uploaded online.

Meloni has been called to testify in a Sardinian court on July 2 in the civil case she is lodging against two men, who are alleged to have superimposed her face on adult film stars’ bodies and posted the videos on a US-based porn site in 2020.

The men, a 40-year-old and his 73-year-old father, have not been publicly named. They are facing criminal defamation charges in addition to Meloni’s civil lawsuit.

Police tracked the men through their cellphones, which were used to create and upload several pornographic videos and images.

At the time the videos were posted, Meloni, 47, was campaigning to be prime minister as head of her Brothers of Italy party. She became prime minister in 2022 in a landslide victory.

The images were online for several months and viewed by several million people, according to the criminal complaint. Some of the images are still circulating online.

Meloni’s lawyer, Maria Giulia Marongiu, told CNN that Meloni will donate any eventual financial award to the Interior Ministry’s domestic violence victims’ fund.

Marongiu told Italian press outlets that the prime minister was hoping to set an example for other victims of revenge porn and deepfake porn to speak out against those who defame them.