Three young men convicted in Spain over AI fake nudes of former schoolmates

A criminal court in Seville has handed down Spain's first criminal conviction for using artificial intelligence to fabricate fake nude images of real young women, sentencing three men to nine months in prison and banning them from major social media and messaging apps for three years and nine months.

The judgment, signed on 1 October by a magistrate at the Criminal Division of the Court of First Instance and Identity Number 15 in Seville, followed an agreement between the Cybercrime Prosecutor's Office, the private prosecution and the defence. The Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia publicised the ruling, which convicted the three men of three offences against moral integrity. The sentence is final, with no appeal possible.

What the court found proven

According to the facts established in the judgment, the three men, acting with a minor, took real photographs of three young women, former schoolmates, from their public Instagram profiles. They used an AI application available on Telegram to alter the images into hyperrealistic compositions simulating the women fully nude. The files were then shared in WhatsApp and Discord groups created specifically for the purpose, and spread beyond them in chains of re forwards whose full extent could not be determined. Around 00:30 on 10 September 2023, an unidentified person sent the manipulated images to one of the victims via Instagram.

The magistrate found the men had acted with a "clear purpose of mockery", aware of the potential harm to the women's dignity. He applied the gender aggravating factor under article 22.4 of the Criminal Code, finding the conduct reflected a "would-be male supremacist mentality that objectifies women".

Sentence and conditions

The prison terms are suspended because the defendants have no criminal record, the sentences do not exceed two years, and they have paid the civil amounts in full. Suspension is conditional on committing no offence for two years, staying off the four apps during that period and completing a sexuality education programme. The men admitted the facts from their first police statements and apologised to the victims.

A wider pattern in the Spanish courts

The Seville ruling sits among a growing run of Spanish court cases over manipulated images. In Almendralejo, the Juvenile Court of Badajoz imposed a year of supervised liberty on each of 15 minors accused of manipulating and spreading nude images of girls.

The Spanish rulings come as social media claims over platform harms move through other jurisdictions, including the K.G.M. case in Los Angeles, a Meta lawsuit in which a jury found Meta and Google liable in March 2026.