By Miranda Murray
BERLIN, March 26 (Reuters) – Germany’s government is facing pressure to toughen laws against digital violence after a prominent television actor accused her former husband of posting AI-generated porn resembling her on fake online accounts purporting to belong to her.
In an article in the weekly Spiegel, actor Collien Fernandes accused her former husband, TV presenter and producer Christian Ulmen, of impersonating her online for years, including sharing sexually explicit deepfakes – videos and photos of her generated using artificial intelligence.
Ulmen’s lawyer, Christian Schertz, said in a statement that the actor would take legal action against what he called “inadmissible coverage based on suspicions” and accused Spiegel of spreading “untrue facts” based on a one-sided account.
Ulmen has not publicly commented. Schertz did not respond to a Reuters request comment. Fernandes did not immediately respond to requests for comment via her social media and agents.
The case has sparked a national conversation on new forms of violence against women in the online sphere and heaped pressure on Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government to close legal loopholes.
PROTESTERS CALL FOR END TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
More than 10,000 people gathered at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate on Sunday to call for an end to violence against women and support Fernandes, holding signs such as “Thanks Collien” and “AI won’t make our bodies yours”.
Others held signs saying “Shame has to change sides”, part of the title of the memoirs of France’s Gisele Pelicot, who has become synonymous with the global fight against sexual violence after the 2024 case that saw her husband convicted of inviting dozens of men to rape her unconscious body after he repeatedly drugged her.
Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig said her ministry was drafting a bill that would make the production of pornographic deepfakes and voyeuristic recordings a criminal offence, with violations punished with up to two years in prison.
“The technology is new. But the underlying motive is ancient. It’s about power, humiliation, and control,” she told parliament on Wednesday during a debate on violence against women, in which all but one of the 14 speakers were women.
At present, only the distribution of such deepfakes is explicitly illegal.
MINISTER URGES ACCOUNTABILITY FROM ONLINE PLATFORMS
The proposal would also make it easier for victims to identify account holders behind illegal content, seek damages and have accounts blocked. Another debate is due to take place in parliament on Thursday.
“Digital violence must not be a business model,” Hubig said, urging greater accountability from platforms such as Elon Musk’s X, whose AI chatbot Grok has been used to flood the site with manipulated sexualised images.
xAI has put some restrictions on Grok’s image-generation function in response to the backlash over those images.
“Only when men also consistently speak out will the shame truly shift,” added Hubig.
Fernandes said she decided to file charges in Spain, where the couple once lived, because of what she views as stronger legal protections for women’s rights than in Germany.
“Germany is an absolute haven for perpetrators,” Fernandes told broadcast news magazine Tagesthemen.
Spain has specialised courts for combating gender-based violence, and since 2025, this has included digital violence such as cyberstalking and non-consensual sharing of private images.
According to the judiciary in Mallorca, preliminary proceedings initiated in December are currently under way.
The complaint alleges misrepresentation of marital status, disclosure of secrets, public defamation, habitual abuse and serious threats, it said.
(Reporting by Miranda Murray in Berlin and David Latona in Madrid;Editing by Alison Williams)
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