Nobody is safe from celebrity AI deepfakes

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AI photos and videos of celebrities are racking up millions of views on social media.…

In hindsight, the post on Instagram should have raised more red flags. The image purported to show actress Mia Goth, just days after filing for divorce from actor and filmmaker Shia LaBeouf, posing in a T-shirt with a pointed message: MY EX IS MY BIGGEST FAN. To really drive home the point, the song “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” by Beyoncé was added to the post.

It would have been out of character for the star of Pearl, who doesn’t have much of a social media presence, if any. But the Instagram account that posted it, @miagoth_, had more than a million followers and was marked with a blue “verified” checkmark. Within days, the image racked up nearly 500,000 likes, including from peers in the entertainment industry, despite the page being labeled as a fan account.

The image, as The Verge reported, was AI-generated, posted by an account Goth’s representative said they’d complained to Instagram about before for posting “counterfeit, AI images” of Goth. Meta allows users to purchase blue “verified” checkmarks, even if the account is not run by a prominent figure or isn’t an official page.

“The fact that this fan account meets Instagram’s criteria to qualify for a ‘blue check’ is disconcerting on a fundamental level,” Christine Tripicchio, a representative for Goth, told The Verge in an email. “Beyond that, it is incomprehensible that Instagram evidently prioritizes the dissemination of forged and manipulated images over the protection and integrity of a public figure’s likeness.”

Because of the news of her divorce, the post trickled through the celebrity gossip outlets, and that coverage in turn propagated the post through Google search. Searches for the actress and the shirt triggered an AI-generated overview saying Goth was taking “a clear swipe at her ex, Shia LaBeouf, following their recent divorce filing,” in turn citing the aforementioned blogs.

A section in Google search results labeled “Mia Goth turns heads on Instagram by wearing a sassy ‘My ex is my biggest fan’ t-shirt” was featured prominently, along with links to social media posts discussing the image. Instagram eventually removed the account for impersonating a public figure.

Since consumer generative AI tools became available several years ago, some of the more memorable — and controversial — use cases have involved famous people. The human subjects in question have historically not responded well to being digitally cloned and used as playthings: An AI-generated Drake sound-alike song was wiped from YouTube following copyright strikes. Scarlett Johansson hired a legal team after OpenAI released a voice for ChatGPT that sounded like her without her consent.