Nearly 150 politicians across Europe have been featured on harmful deepfake pornography websites over recent years, according to new research published by German think tank Agora Digitale Transformation. The overwhelming majority of those targeted are women, with their images appearing in explicit videos or listed in database-style entries that connect to deepfake creation tools. The findings reveal the scale of nonconsensual sexual content targeting female public figures across the continent.
Researcher Benjamin Shultz analyzed approximately 160 domains hosting deepfake abuse and discovered that at least 138 women members of parliament from 22 European Union countries have been featured or referenced on these sites, compared to just nine male MPs. Women legislators are 33 times more likely to be targeted by deepfake ecosystems, according to Shultz's calculations. Politicians from Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and France appeared most frequently, and more senior politicians faced higher rates of targeting. Shultz compiled details of over 5,800 parliament members across the EU in July and used custom search engines to identify their presence on the websites.
The content categories include actively hosted material featuring MPs, indexed results where content had been deleted, and profiles serving as "gateways" for potentially generating new content. Multiple websites displayed pages with legislators' names, official photographs, and sometimes social media profiles or personal details, with some sections rating women's bodies. These MP biographies often linked directly to "nudifier" apps or the sites' own tools claiming to digitally undress people. "It has all the images, all the information, and a direct link to the tool, and in three clicks you can generate," Shultz stated. "That's just as bad as actually hosting the content." The platforms hosting this material are "designed to run like businesses," according to AI adviser Henry Ajder, who has tracked the ecosystem since 2018.
The research highlights how deepfake pornography functions as part of broader online hate and intimidation campaigns against women politicians, potentially damaging democratic participation. Dutch MP Suzanne Kröger, who was impacted, described the findings as "really deeply disturbing" and noted that while politicians have platforms to speak out, "there are millions of women victims of these criminal acts." The technology to create AI-generated deepfakes has become far more accessible since first emerging in late 2017, with output growing increasingly realistic. Millions of nonconsensual AI images and videos have been produced, primarily by men and boys, and are frequently used to harass, intimidate, or blackmail women and girls, including at nearly 100 schools worldwide.
Shultz warns that this targeting discourages women from seeking office initially and pushes them out of public life, with substantial evidence showing it causes real psychological harm and reputational damage that can affect future career prospects outside politics. Dutch Socialist Party MP Sarah Dobbe emphasized the importance of direct support for victims and rapid content removal. Shultz alerted all affected MPs individually and provided guidance on potential removal methods, though the underlying infrastructure remains set up to perpetrate abuse at scale with ease. The research underscores a chilling effect that may prevent women and girls from becoming public figures, threatening the diversity of democratic representation. Lawmakers and advocates will need to confront an ecosystem purpose-built for harm, where the barrier to creating abusive content has collapsed to just a few clicks while the psychological and professional toll on targets continues to mount.