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Medium reported severity

Pontevedra province: Guardia Civil locates two men as presumed creator and distributor of AI-generated sexual images of 22 women

In June 2026 women in a municipality of Pontevedra province (Galicia, Spain) reported to the Guardia Civil that AI-generated sexual images of them were circulating, and 18 complaints had been filed by the afternoon of 10 June. An affected woman, quoted in an El Correo Gallego article whose source line is Faro de Vigo, said the images were posted on a WhatsApp status for a full day and that the woman saw them on the afternoon of the Saturday before the 10 June report (6 June by the calendar). On 16 July 2026 the Guardia Civil said it had located two men as presumed responsible for creating and distributing the images, which it counted as showing 22 women in total. The reports name neither man and say a 35-year-old is considered the creator and a 29-year-old is investigated for an offence against moral integrity. The release says the images were made with AI applications from photographs taken from social-media profiles, and the files went to a court of instruction. June reports put the number of women appearing at about thirty, and no charge decision or court outcome is reported.

AI system
Unidentified image tool
Unknown
Occurred
6 Jun 2026
Reported
9 June 2026
Event location
Spain
What the AI did
Depicted or impersonated the person
Reported harm
Exploitation or AbusePsychological Distress
Whose AI use
Someone else’s AI use
Setting
Privacy · Everyday life
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 3 underlying accounts
9 claims: 9 reported. 7 open questions
People reported harmed
At least 22 people

AI system as recorded: Unspecified AI image-generation applications

Reported harm

The Guardia Civil counts 22 women in the AI-generated sexual images (release as relayed), and at least 18 complaints had been filed by 10 June 2026. One affected woman described the images as very realistic, said many people called about them, and the El Correo Gallego article describes the situation of the woman as one of anguish. No other affected woman's account of the impact is reported.

What remains unknown

  • The creation date of the images is not stated. The record dates the case to the first documented dissemination (a WhatsApp status posting on Saturday 6 June 2026), which rests on one affected woman's account and a photo caption in the same article.
  • The number of women appearing differs: the release counts 22, while an affected woman and El Correo Gallego say about thirty. The release does not say how many of the 22 filed complaints.
  • Early reports differ on whether the complainants belong to one group of friends and whether they include men. The ages of depicted women who did not file complaints are not stated.
  • The AI applications are not named and the reviewer did not see the images.
  • The relayed July release says the investigators examined the images and traced their spread online, and it gives no further account of how the two men were identified. Neither man is named here, and no charge decision or court outcome is reported.
  • El Correo Gallego reports that some source photographs were taken years earlier, according to an affected woman. The reports do not say how the source photographs were selected.
  • The reviewer did not see the Guardia Civil release itself. Europa Press and EFE relay it and one outlet dates it a Wednesday while the others date it Thursday 16 July 2026.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. The Guardia Civil release as relayed says AI applications were used to create the images from photographs taken from social-media profiles. The applications are not named and the reviewer did not see the images.

9 claims: 9 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported By the afternoon of 10 June 2026 the Guardia Civil had received 18 complaints from people who found AI-generated sexual images of themselves circulating, and no author had been identified at that point.

Causal attribution. Guardia Civil figures as relayed by two outlets on 10 and 11 June, when the count was still rising (12 that morning and 18 that afternoon). The reviewer did not see the complaints or the images.

Reported An affected woman said, in an El Correo Gallego article whose source line is Faro de Vigo, that the images were posted on the WhatsApp status of a person's account and stayed visible for a full day, and that the woman saw the images on the afternoon of the Saturday before the Wednesday 10 June 2026 report (6 June 2026 by the calendar).

Causal attribution. A single first-person account (identity withheld by the outlet) in one El Correo Gallego article whose source line is Faro de Vigo. The date 6 June is computed from Wednesday 10 June in the same article and is not printed. The creation date of the images is not stated.

Reported The Guardia Civil release of 16 July 2026 says the images were made with AI applications able to create such images from photographs taken from social-media profiles.

Causal attribution. One Guardia Civil release relayed by Europa Press and EFE. The applications are not named and the reviewer did not see the images.

  • europapress.es(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    en el que se emplearon aplicaciones de inteligencia artificial capaces de crear este tipo de imágenes a partir de fotografías obtenidas de perfiles de redes sociales
  • infobae.com(opens in new tab) supports · Spanish
    los autores habían empleado aplicaciones de inteligencia artificial capaces de crear este tipo de imágenes a partir de fotografías obtenidas de perfiles de redes sociales
Reported The release says the Guardia Civil located two men as presumed responsible for creating and distributing the images: a 35-year-old considered the creator of the manipulated material, and a 29-year-old investigated for an offence against moral integrity (EFE: for distributing the content).

Causal attribution. Police allegations as relayed. Neither man is named here, no charge decision or court finding is reported, and the release establishes only its own contents.

Reported The Guardia Civil release counts a total of 22 women in the images, and EFE says the investigation began in June after complaints by several of the affected women.

Causal attribution. One Guardia Civil figure relayed by two outlets. The release does not say how many of the 22 women filed complaints, and the 18 complaints counted on 10 June are a separate figure.

Reported In June, an affected woman and El Correo Gallego put the number of women appearing in the images at about thirty, which differs from the release's 22.

Causal attribution. A first-person estimate and an unattributed report ("ha trascendido") in a second El Correo Gallego piece that says a daily of the same publishing group had reported the progress of the case. The first article's source line is Faro de Vigo, so the two supports may share one upstream. The difference from the July release is unresolved.

Reported Reports of 9 to 11 June describe the complainants as adults. El Debate attributes this to Guardia Civil sources and La Voz de Galicia says most were aged 20 to 30.

Causal attribution. El Debate attributes the adult status to Guardia Civil sources, the El Correo Gallego wording is unattributed ("ha trascendido") and La Voz de Galicia gives no attribution for the ages. The three outlets are in one Guardia Civil briefing group, so the claim is not corroborated. Reports differ on whether the complainants include men and whether they are one group of friends, and the ages of depicted women who did not file complaints are not stated.

Reported An affected woman described the images as looking very real and said many people called to tell the woman about them. The outlet describes the situation of the woman as one of anguish made worse by the realistic look of the images.

Causal attribution. One affected woman's account through one outlet. No other affected woman's account of the impact was found.

Reported The files were sent to a court of instruction in the province, and no charge decision or court outcome is reported.

Causal attribution. One Guardia Civil release relayed by two outlets. The absence of a later outcome reflects the sources read up to 30 September 2026.

Sources

6 sources inspected, from 3 underlying accounts. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in Spanish and Galician by the reviewer. The affected woman's quotes are in Galician. Locators are verbatim and assertions are the reviewer's English paraphrase. The page carries a subscription prompt after the last paragraph, and its JSON-LD article body ends at the same paragraph. Applies to s1.

Read in Spanish by the reviewer. Locators are verbatim Spanish and assertions are the reviewer's English paraphrase. Applies to s2, s4.

Read in Spanish by the reviewer. The page is encoded ISO-8859-1 and the saved text shows replacement characters for accented letters, so locators from this page use unaccented passages only. Assertions are the reviewer's English paraphrase. Applies to s3.

Read in Spanish by the reviewer. Locators are verbatim Spanish and assertions are the reviewer's English paraphrase. EFE wire copy. Applies to s5.

Read in Spanish by the reviewer from a Wayback capture of the page (article text present, membership prompts around it). Locators are verbatim Spanish and assertions are the reviewer's English paraphrase. Applies to s6.

Event countries: Spain. Affected-person countries: Spain. Court countries: Spain.

The reports name the Guardia Civil command of Pontevedra, the province of Pontevedra in Galicia and a court of instruction in the province, and El Debate (9 June 2026) refers to Spanish legislation. The country was not inferred from the language or the publisher. The files were referred to a court and no proceeding outcome is reported.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-30: Six Spanish and Galician reports of 9 June to 16 July 2026 are cited, and five more were read. Complaint counts and the count of women come from Guardia Civil statements relayed by several outlets, so those claims are reported and share independence groups, while the article quoting one affected woman is a separate chain. The affected women, the two men and the municipality are not identified, and the images are not described beyond AI-generated sexual images. The record dates the case to the first documented WhatsApp posting on 6 June 2026, which rests on one affected woman's account.

People reported harmed in this case

At least 22 people

0 AI participants · 22 other people harmed

The Guardia Civil release, relayed by Europa Press and EFE, counts a total of 22 women in the images. An affected woman and El Correo Gallego put the number at about thirty in June, so 22 is used as a documented minimum. Eighteen complaints had been filed by 10 June. The depicted women are counted as harmed because the release and the reports describe them as affected victims of the circulation.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Pontevedra province: Guardia Civil locates two men as presumed creator and distributor of AI-generated sexual images of 22 women. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-pontevedra-province-spain-two-men-identified-over-reported-ai-generated-sexual-images-of-women

BibTeX

@misc{2026_pontevedra_province_spain_two_men_identified_over_reported_ai_generated_sexual_images_of_women,
  title = {Pontevedra province: Guardia Civil locates two men as presumed creator and distributor of AI-generated sexual images of 22 women},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-pontevedra-province-spain-two-men-identified-over-reported-ai-generated-sexual-images-of-women}
}

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