São Paulo court orders social media to remove AI posts defaming Senator Magno Malta

A court in São Paulo has ordered the immediate removal of social media posts featuring artificial intelligence-generated images that allegedly defamed Senator Magno Malta. The preliminary injunction was issued by the 43rd Civil Court of São Paulo, responding to a petition filed by the senator's legal team.

The senator's defense argued that the AI-generated images were used to construct "false narratives" about an alleged incident where Malta was accused of assaulting a nursing technician. The legal team asserted that these publications were not political criticism but deliberate falsehoods, employing injurious, defamatory, and slanderous terms that transgressed the boundaries of free speech. The explicit aim, they stated in the petition, was to "MAR THE APPLICANT'S REPUTATION" within society.

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Such publications involving the creation of the mentioned images do not represent political criticism, but rather a deliberate lie and a criminal act, as they use injurious, defamatory, and slanderous terms, exceeding the limits of freedom of expression, aiming solely to 'MAR THE APPLICANT'S REPUTATION' before society.

In his decision, Judge Miguel Ferrari Júnior stated that the cessation of the offenses was crucial, given their scale and potential impact on the author's professional reputation. The nursing technician had previously filed a police report accusing the senator of assault, an allegation Malta has denied, claiming the technician caused him "intense pain" during an examination. That case is currently under investigation. The court's order mandates Facebook to remove the posts and preserve user access logs and registration data.

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In the case under examination, the cessation of offenses is salutary, given the proportion they have reached, especially due to the professional reputation built by the plaintiff.