New Delhi: 138 women politicians across 22 European Union countries have been identified on sexually explicit deepfake websites, compared with just nine male politicians on the same sites, according to research by German digital democracy think tank Agora Digitale Transformation (ADT).
Published in September 2026, the research found that women politicians were 33 times more likely than men to be targeted. One in 14 women covered by the study appeared somewhere on these sites, compared with one in 500 men.
However, not all 138 women had an explicit deepfake actively hosted online. ADT found live depictions of 38 politicians, while others appeared on what researchers called “gateway” pages. These pages carried women’s names, photographs and other information, alongside links to AI tools capable of generating nude or sexualised images.
Seniority also appeared to matter. Women serving as cabinet ministers or party leaders were more likely to appear on the sites than those in more junior positions. Some gateway pages also rated women’s bodies and linked their social media accounts.
How the researchers found them
For the study, researchers looked at 5,872 politicians serving in national parliaments across all 27 EU countries. Between 16 and 20 July, they searched for the politicians across 160 domains known to host deepfake pornography and other non-consensual sexual material.
36 of those sites returned matches.
Dutch politician Suzanne Kröger was among the women identified. She described the findings as “really deeply disturbing”, while pointing out that politicians represent only a small part of the problem; millions of other women are also targeted by this form of abuse.
“Deepfake porn is part of a much bigger trend of online hate and intimidation against women and female politicians,” she said.
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Taking down sites may not erase the traces
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office seized 12 deepfake website domains on Monday. Eight were among those examined by ADT and contained material exposing 19 of the politicians identified in the study.
However, taking down a website does not necessarily remove every trace of its content from search engines.
ADT found 47 records from one deepfake domain still stored in Google’s search index more than a month after its seizure, although the researchers could not find them through an ordinary Google search. The content was no longer hosted on the seized domain, but records linking people’s names to it remained in Google’s system.
The researchers argued that even such traces can cause reputational harm and repeatedly remind victims that the material once existed.
Countries that already had laws specifically addressing deepfakes did not show lower exposure levels in ADT’s study.
The researchers said having a law on the books was not enough. Countries differ in whether cases were prosecuted, how quickly material was removed, and how much was invested in enforcement.
From 2 December, the EU will ban AI systems designed to generate non-consensual sexually explicit or intimate material.
Edited by Maryam Hassan