Presenter Gráinne Seoige dipped her toe into the world of politics in the last election but for the Galway woman she has made up her mind when it comes to politics in the future.
During her campaign she applauded for speaking so candidly about the trauma she experienced when deepfake AI pictures of her started doing the rounds.
The presenter was targeted during the 2024 general election campaign when she was running for Galway West and admits that this was ‘the most shocking thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.’
Featuring on Miriam O’Callaghan’s radio show on RTÉ, Gráinne, ahead of her new documentary, Deepfake Ireland: The Naked Truth, spoke about when she first found out about the images.
‘I got a phone call from a member of the team that was working around me to say it had been brought to their attention that there was a pornographic deepfake image of me circulating on phones in the area. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t know such a thing could be done, and I really didn’t believe that somebody would do it to me. I was literally leaving the house to go canvassing in Connemara.’
On Friday she featured on the Late Late Show, and said she ‘felt humiliated’ and spent months feeling ‘vulnerable’ every time she’d leave the house, so much so that she’d go to Dunnes in disguise.
Grainne made it clear to Miriam that this was something she was not going to back down on.
‘I am not going to go quietly on this. I have a five-year-old niece. I look at little girls and teenagers going in and out of school every day. They deserve safety, and we need people in power to grab the bull by the horns now and actually hold these people and platforms to account.
For Grainne, this experience has put her off from ever entering politics again and when Miriam asked her outright if she would return she said ‘Never again…That is for sure. You can take that to the bank.’
‘More women stood than ever before last election, and yet only one in four TDs are female in this country. We have so much to give. We are so educated, so experienced. But the minute I stood, I was a celebrity candidate. I was a parachute candidate.’
She highlighted to Miriam how she ‘was sexually debased and degraded. So to me, the message is very clear. They don’t want women in there. Women cause trouble. Women are troublemakers. We want change. We want fairness. And this society is increasingly not about fairness, in my view.’
