Penny Mordaunt has opened up about the fact she has been the victim of ‘deliberately humiliating and violent’ deepfake porn.
The former Leader of the House of Commons made the candid confession in an interview with Victoria Derbyshire on Tuesday.
She told the BBC Newsnight interviewer that the people behind the cruel creations should consider the consequence of their actions – as she called for tighter controls on social media.
The former MP for Portsmouth North also revealed that upsetting instances of abuse such as deepfake porn are a regular occurance.
She told the BBC programme: ‘Well, not a week has gone by in my parliamentary career when something of this nature hasn’t happened.’
Non-consensual deepfake pornography is the production of an image using artificial intelligence.
The creator combines a photograph and uses AI to remove clothes or create a fake nude photo in the likeness of a real person.
Ms Mordaunt explained she had first learned that she had been a victim of a deepfake image following an investigation by Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman who uncovered 250 famous individuals whose likeness had been stolen.
She added: ‘My face had been used, AI porn generated, deepfake porn. It happened to a number of parliamentarians.’
Other victims included Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, former education secretary, Gillian Keegan, and Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, Priti Patel.
Following her ‘humiliating’ experience, the former MP has called for tighter controls on social media and online platforms and raised concerns around access by children to deepfake pornogpraphy.
‘I would ask the people behind this, don’t they realize the consequences in the real world when they do something like that,’ she said.
‘Because although I haven’t seen this myself, it was deliberately humiliating and violent and that plays across into the real world.
‘It plays across in to people taking actual real world actions against ourselves and that has happened to me, it’s happened to a lot of my colleagues.’
She added: ‘The worry for me is actually more with children and we wouldn’t want people to see these things on the walk to school.
‘If they did, they’d be in therapy. But we have seemed to be perfectly happy for them to see it online. And so I’m with the ns on this. We need to go much further, and we need to recognize the real harm this is doing to young people.’
Victoria Derbyshire clarified that Ms Mordaunt was referring to the social media ban for under-16s in to which the former Minister for Women and Equalities explained that she wanted the government to do more in tackling the harmful act.
Ms Mordaunt even called on X owner Elon Musk to step in and improve age verifications to protect children.
She said: ‘I would ban certain social media platforms. And I think the government needs to have some courage here in addressing these issues with people like Elon Musk.
‘That man is taking the human race to Mars. I’m sure he can figure out age verification and what needs to follow from that.’
The ex-parliamentarian added that despite the more difficult sides of being in the public eye, she found that her role in Parliament was still generally positive.
The creation of deepfake porn is illegal in the UK following a new Online Safety Act which was brought in last year.
It includes the sharing or threatening to share intimate photos of someone without their permission and this includes deepfake images.