Video depicting Italy's Meloni as speaking out against sharia law is AI-generated
- Published on July 19, 2026 at 04:20
- 3 min read
- By Sachin BAGHEL, AFP India
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has previously spoken about certain interpretations of Islamic culture and European rights and values, but a video circulating online, purportedly showing her saying in English that she will not allow Italy to implement sharia law, is an AI fabrication. The clip appears to have been created using a photo taken during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. A review of footage from that press conference reveals several errors in the AI-generated video, including that Meloni did not speak English at the event.
"We won't allow sharia law to be implemented in Italy. I am Giorgia Meloni. I am a Christian. I am the daughter of Italy," says the Hindi-language caption of an X video shared on July 9, 2026.
The 10-second-long video appears to show the Italian prime minister making the remarks in English, while standing at a podium bearing the German and Italian flags.
The video, which was reshared more than 1,600 times, was posted by an account that has previously shared false information.
The same video was also shared in similar Facebook and X posts.
"Will our Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi be able to speak like that?" reads a comment on one of the posts.
Another says, "Exactly -- wherever a country is not Islamic, what does sharia law have to do with it, and why should it be implemented there?"
While Meloni has previously spoken of there being a "problem of compatibility" between certain interpretations of Islamic culture and the values and rights of European civilisation, the circulating video is an AI fabrication (archived here and here).
A reverse image search on Google using the opening frame of the falsely shared video led to a news report featuring a matching photo of Meloni published on January 23 (archived link).
The photo, credited to the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA) is captioned: "Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni attends a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) on the sidelines of an intergovernmental summit between Italy and Germany at Villa Doria Pamphilj in Rome, Italy, 23 January 2026."
The photo is also available on the EPA website (archived link).
A subsequent keyword search led to a recording of the joint press conference posted on an official Italian government YouTube channel on January 23 (archived link).
The EPA photo corresponds to the 20:15 mark of the YouTube video.
A review of the full video shows Meloni speaks entirely in Italian -- not English, as she is depicted as doing in the false posts. Meloni's earrings are also different to how they appear in the falsely shared clip, and there is no black wire trailing from her podium.
Moreover, the falsely shared video also contains the watermark of the Grok AI chatbot in the bottom-right corner.
An analysis of the falsely shared video's audio using the Hiya voice cloning detection tool, available in The Verification Plugin, found it was also "very likely AI-generated" (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked false claims about Meloni that relied on AI-generated visuals. The Italian prime minister has also slammed AI-generated images of herself, calling such deepfakes a "dangerous tool" that can target and harm anyone (archived link).
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