Giorgia Meloni has sued two Sardinian men over using her face in pornographic videos.

A court in the Sardinian city of Sassari asked Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni this week to testify on 2 July in the trial of two men who had posted pornographic videos online in which her face was superimposed onto porn actresses' bodies.

The two men are a father and his son aged 73 and 40, respectively, whom Meloni has sued and has asked for €100,000 in damages. The premier would donate this “symbolic” amount to female victims of violence, her lawyers told the press. 

The videos, made with deepfake technology, were uploaded on a US porn site in 2020, when Meloni was a member of parliament, and have gathered millions of views from around the world, for several months.

The older man has asked the court to task him with unpaid community service in return for dropping the charges against him and a judge will decide on this request next week.

More to read:
Porn viewers in E.U. will be asked to prove their age

Deepfakes are not illegal in the European Union under its recently-adopted Digital Services Act, but Italy is expected next month to make such manipulation punishable with a stricter legislation on artificial intelligence.

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