Queen Mathilde and Princess Elisabeth Targeted by AI Nude Deepfakes as Belgian Palace Seeks Their Removal

Queen Mathilde and Crown Princess Elisabeth of Belgium were among the high-profile Belgians targeted with nude deepfakes. The Belgian Royal Palace is working swiftly to remove the non-consensual AI-generated images from the internet.

The fabricated explicit images were discovered on Monday, 19 October 2026. By then, they had reportedly been online for days. Other victims included high-profile female politicians and the wives of politicians and government officials.

Officials To File Legal Complaint

Flemish Vice-Minister-President Melissa Depraetere and former Belgian Defence Minister Ludivine Dedonder were among those targeted by nude deepfakes. Dedonder, while unsurprised, intends to file a legal complaint related to the spread of the images.

'As disgusting as it is, very little surprises me anymore,' said Depraetere. 'People need to know that this is unacceptable and that doctored images of nudity can destroy lives.'

A Palace source reportedly acknowledged that removing all the images as quickly as desired might not be easy. Many technology experts say that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is AI-generated. Still, there are ways to spot AI-generated content.

How To Spot Deepfakes

According to the Harvard Business Review, many deepfakes have telltale signs: 'Look closely. Deepfake videos may have unnatural facial movements, lip-sync errors or facial gestures that appear robotic and exaggerated.'

'Deepfake images may have unnatural smudging around facial edges, hair or jewelry,' the publication also said. Incidentally, October is also recognised as Cybersecurity Awareness Month in several countries. The initiative was originally established in the US by the Department of Homeland Security and the National Cybersecurity Alliance, and has since expanded internationally.

Bahrain's 2026 campaign theme is 'Don't Make It Easy for Them'. However, in the case of the Belgian royal family and officials, stronger passwords and multifactor authentication would not have prevented people from using their publicly available photographs to create non-consensual deepfakes.

High-Profile Women Targeted

Queen Mathilde, Crown Princess Elisabeth, Vice-Minister-President Depraetere and former Defence Minister Dedonder are just the latest high-profile women targeted by AI deepfakes. Over the last few years, women in positions of power and with high public profiles have been targeted with AI-generated nude images.

Lena Schilling, an Austrian Member of the European Parliament (MEP), learned earlier this month that explicit images of her and other female MEPs were circulating online. She urged the European Union to act against this targeted harassment of women.

'I remember how nervous I was and how much I had prepared for the press conference,' Schilling said of an image from an early press conference that had been digitally altered to depict her naked. 'And then to see someone using this image in a way aimed at harming and humiliating me was really hard to grasp.'

A report by Agora Digitale Transformation, a German think tank, identified 50 MEPs, 46 of them women, who had been depicted in or associated with sexualised deepfakes.

In 2024, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni experienced a similar incident in which digitally altered pornographic videos featuring her face were spread online and accumulated millions of views. Meloni sought €100,000 (£84,245 / $112,250) in damages in a criminal defamation case against a 40-year-old man accused of creating and distributing the videos and his 73-year-old father, who was also implicated.

The case was heard in Sardinia. The father was granted an alternative measure involving community service, while the proceedings against his son continued.