In Italy, the opposition complained about the racist and discriminatory images generated by artificial intelligence shared on social media by Matteo Salvini’s far-right League Party, which serves as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport. Opposition parties in the country pointed out that images circulated by the League Party on social media platforms were “racist, Islamophobic, and xenophobic.” According to The Guardian, the center-left Democratic Party (PD) and the Green and Left Alliance filed a complaint with Agcom, the country’s regulatory authority in the communications sector, about the images. The complaint stated that the fake images spread by the League Party contained “every category of hate speech.” Both Facebook, Instagram, and X were included in the League Party’s social media channels, which recently shared dozens of images generated by artificial intelligence. The images often depicted black men with knives attacking women or police officers. Senator Antonio Nicita of the Democratic Party mentioned in a statement that “the images created by artificial intelligence and published by Salvini’s party carry every category of hate speech from racism to xenophobia and Islamophobia.” Nicita emphasized that artificial intelligence was used to target a certain group of individuals, including migrants and Arabs, portraying them in the images as “potential criminals, thieves, and rapists.” The senator also highlighted efforts made to conceal the identities of the “victims” in the AI-generated images, making them appear realistic. Francesco Emilio Borrelli, a member of the Green and Left Alliance, expressed seriousness about the situation, noting that artificial intelligence creates content based on individuals’ instructions, indicating that in this case, “images showing a black person scaring an elderly or frightened woman” were requested. Borrelli described this as part of a strategy to instill fear among citizens. A spokesperson from Salvini’s party admitted that “some of the images were digitally manipulated.” The spokesperson emphasized that the issue was about the facts, not the images, as each social media post was based on news articles published in Italian newspapers. The spokesperson suggested blaming those who created the situation if the truth looked harsh, rather than blaming the messengers. Furthermore, Salvatore Romano, the chief researcher at the non-profit organization AI Forensics, pointed out that the images shared by the League Party contained “all the signs of artificial intelligence.” Romano also highlighted that the images were taken out of context. For instance, one of the images shared by the party depicted “Attacked a foreign worker,” with a picture of a black man raising a fist in the air. However, the news clipping shared alongside the image only mentioned that the suspect was “foreign,” without specifying the country of origin, and did not include a photograph of the attack.