Fernandes has filed a legal complaint in Spain, where the couple previously lived together, making allegations of threats and abuse.
However, Ulmen’s lawyers have rejected her characterisation of the situation and say no “unilateral attribution of blame” has been made towards their client.
The TV presenter told German public broadcaster ARD that she chose to make a complaint in Spain as it has stronger gender-based violence laws than Germany – a country she describes as a “paradise for perpetrators”.
There is no dispute that Fernandes has been a victim of AI-generated porn. The material is out there on the internet and her broader claims, about being the victim of online abuse, are not new.
She has previously spoken about this in a 2024 ZDF documentary entitled Deepfake porn: Digital abuse.
In November 2024, Fernandes lodged a criminal complaint in Germany against persons unknown, a month before she alleges that Ulmen confessed.
It has now emerged that an investigation in Germany has been reopened, in the wake of the Spiegel report.
The public prosecutor’s office in Itzehoe, a small town near Hamburg, told the BBC that the prior investigation was discontinued last June as there were “no leads” about who may have allegedly created fake accounts in Fernandes’ name.
“It should be noted that the presumption of innocence applies in favour of the accused,” the prosecutor’s office added.
The story is also putting political pressure on Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has long been accused of being out of touch when it comes to younger, female voters – sometimes referred to by critics as his “woman problem”.
When asked about violence against women in parliament on Wednesday, Merz said that there had been an “explosion” of violence in the physical and digital spheres with a “considerable portion” originating from immigrant groups.
The chancellor’s remarks did prompt some applause in the Bundestag, among his own MPs in the conservative CDU party as well as from lawmakers in the far-right AfD.
However, others say his remarks were misjudged, including Clara Bünger of the Left party who told German TV: “Whoever points as a reflex to immigration in violence against women, downplays structural violence instead of fighting it.”
Government figures show that non-Germans are over-represented as suspects in family and domestic violence cases, although exact nationalities are not specified.
Non-German suspects, in this case, are people who have either foreign nationality, are stateless or their nationality is unclear. Anyone who has both German and another nationality is considered German in these statistics, while a general migration background is not recorded.
Meanwhile, the number of female victims of violence and other crimes, in person and online, has risen to an all-time high in Germany, according to police crime statistics for 2024.