Does a viral video actually show Italian PM Giorgia Meloni saying that she will not allow the implementation of Sharia law in her country? No, that's not true: The content of the video was replaced using AI. Unlike in the viral clip, Meloni did not speak English in the real address and said nothing about Sharia law.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here and here) published on X on by @Alinavisoo_life on July 7, 2026. It opened:
GIORGIA MELONI SAY [sic]:
'We Won't Allow Sharia Law To Be Implemented In Italy I'm Giorgia Meloni - I'm Christian I'm A Daughter Of Italy'
What's your response to her ??
This is what the video attached to the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @Alinavisoo_life on X.)
The post was marked as containing AI-generated content in two separate places:
(Image source: post by @Alinavisoo_life on X.)
Online AI detector Sightengine said that the clip was 99% likely to have been created by AI:
(Image source: Sightengine.)
Another tool, Hive Moderation, offered a more nuanced take, ruling that most of the AI-generated content in the video came specifically from the audio track:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
InVID's Hiya confirmed that Meloni's voice in the video in question was 93% likely a product of AI-powered voice-cloning:
(Image source: InVID.)
Photos of Meloni in the same outfit and the same setting have been online since January 23, 2026. For example, that is when Reuters published one of the images (archived here). That caption read:
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks during a joint statement with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured) at the end of Italian-German government consultations at Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome, Italy...
Lead Stories found the video of her speech on YouTube (archived here) and on the website of the Italian government (archived here). In the recording, Meloni spoke Italian and did not switch to English.
Lead Stories searched the automatically generated transcript for two spellings of the word "Sharia" but it was not mentioned in that address (click to view larger):
(Image source: YouTube.)
(Image source: YouTube.)
