New research has uncovered that women MPs across the European Union face disproportionate targeting with explicit synthetic media online.
While researchers examine the scale of these digital threats, the findings show that remnants of the content can continue to linger across search engines long after sites are taken down.
138 Women Targeted Across the EU
A total of 138 women MPs across 22 EU nations have appeared or been mentioned on explicit deepfake websites, compared with just nine male MPs found on the same platforms, according to a study by German digital democracy think tank Agora Digitale Transformation (ADT).
Women MPs were 33 times more likely than male MPs to be targeted, the September 2026 study found. The numbers show that roughly one in 14 women included in the research appeared somewhere on these platforms, compared with one in 500 men.
Not all of those 138 women had an explicit deepfake actively hosted online, though. The study found that 38 politicians had live depictions. At the same time, the rest appeared on what researchers called 'gateway' pages—sites featuring their names, photos and other personal information alongside direct links to AI tools designed to generate nude or sexualised images.
Seniority also appeared to matter, with cabinet ministers and party leaders more likely to appear on the sites than those in more junior positions. Several of those gateway pages also rated the women's bodies and linked directly to their social media accounts.
Study Finds Women Face Higher Exposure
Researchers examined 5,872 politicians serving in national parliaments across all 27 EU nations for the project. The study did not include members of the European Parliament. Between 16 and 20 July, researchers searched 160 domains known to host deepfake pornography and other non-consensual sexual material, finding matches on 36 of them.
Among the women identified was Dutch politician Suzanne Kröger, who called the findings 'really deeply disturbing', while noting that politicians represent only a fraction of the issue, with millions of other women facing the same abuse. 'Deepfake porn is part of a much bigger trend of online hate and intimidation against women and female politicians,' she said.
Deepfake Sites Leave Digital Traces
On Monday, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office seized 12 deepfake website domains. Eight were among those examined by ADT and contained material exposing 19 of the politicians identified in the study, though taking down a site does not automatically remove all traces of its content from search engines.
More than a month after one deepfake domain was seized, ADT found 47 records from it still stored in Google's search index, 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 individual names to it remained in Google's system.
Researchers said even such lingering traces can cause reputational harm and repeatedly remind victims that the material once existed. Countries with laws specifically addressing deepfakes did not show lower exposure levels in ADT's study. The researchers said having legislation on the books was not enough, as countries differ in how cases are prosecuted, how quickly material is removed and how much is invested in enforcement.
Meanwhile, the EU will ban AI systems designed to generate non-consensual sexually explicit or intimate material from 2 December 2026.
