Deepfake Pornography Allegations Against Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni: A Case Study for AI Incident Prevention

January 1, 2020

In 2020, deepfake pornographic videos falsely depicting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were uploaded to a U.S. website, causing widespread concern. This incident underscores the importance of responsible AI governance and safe and secure AI practices. In 2024, Meloni reportedly sued Alessio Scurosu, 40, and his father, Roberto Scurosu, 73, seeking €100,000 in damages. Ready to help shape responsible AI? JOIN US This AI incident maps to the Govern function in HISPI Project Cerebellum Trusted AI Model (TAIM).
Alleged deployer
roberto-scurosu, alessio-scurosu
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
giorgia-meloni

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/926

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.