Nobody is safe from celebrity AI deepfakes

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. Ariana Grande is said to have blocked an account posting AI-generated content of her last year. Taylor Swift publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president in 2024, saying she was moved to clarify her position after Donald Trump posted fake images suggesting she endorsed him.

There was a moment when everyone, even the rich and famous, was grappling with norms around a new technology. Now, the trough of AI content online is only growing — and it’s not clear if anyone is trying or able to stop it.

AI content depicting female public figures is often overtly sexual. A profile that exclusively posts AI-generated images of Johansson — often with bare feet prominently displayed — included contact information so that companies could advertise on the account, along with links to Patreon and Telegram channels selling subscriptions. The content off-platform used Johansson’s name and (AI) image to advertise adult content. Another account posts realistic AI-generated images of actors and musicians like Millie Bobby Brown, Zendaya, and Grande, always partially undressed or in sexualized positions. Some accounts have their own niche, like “Stranger Things actors getting married to each other.”

After The Verge asked Meta about eight accounts posting celebrity deepfake content, spokesperson Alex Dziedzan said the company had removed some of the accounts. Two of them — the Goth one and the Johansson one — appear to be taken down.

“We do not permit accounts to use someone’s likeness to pose as that individual, regardless of whether the content is authentic or AI-generated,” Dziedzan said in an email.

Taylor Swift is holding a drink, rapping along to Drake’s “Burning Bridges,” expletives and all. “I’m off a [Quaalude]/it make my body tingle,” she sings, wearing the dress from the fateful 2009 VMAs moment. The video is AI, obviously. It has 1.8 million views on Instagram.

“I don’t think her pr team gonna like her saying the N word,” someone commented.

Instagram is filled with videos like this, often inexplicably following very specific formats. A clip of AI Shrek doing the same thing as AI Swift has 3.1 million views. Here’s Steve Jobs, swaggering around to a different Drake song with a bottle of champagne in his hand (371,000 views). There’s also an identical Lionel Messi version (2.1 million views) posted by a different account. Here are Formula 1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen lipsyncing to “APT” by Bruno Mars and Rosé (2.9 million views). Another clip shows AI Swift’s wedding to AI Travis Kelce at AI Madison Square Garden.

“ai he wore white tuxedo,” one fan helpfully fact-checked.

In the absence of national right of publicity laws, AI-generated content featuring real people is being litigated on the platform level. (The US’s Take It Down Act, which was signed into law in 2025, specifically criminalizes the distribution of nonconsensual intimate imagery, including AI-generated content, and compels platforms to remove it within 48 hours.)

YouTube has likeness detection, perhaps the most robust deepfake monitoring and takedown system. Under the program, YouTube will scan its platform for visual matches for a person — and as of recently, sound-alikes — and allow them to request takedowns of content. Not every takedown request is accepted; the company says it considers public interest, newsworthiness, and consent in evaluating takedowns. The program was initially opened to public figures like celebrities, content creators, politicians, and journalists, but now covers every adult with a YouTube account. In the past, the company has said that the number of takedown requests it receives is relatively small. Creators want to be aware of what’s been posted of them on YouTube, but it often ends up being “fairly benign or additive to their overall business,” Amjad Hanif, vice president of creator products, said in a press briefing in March.

YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon noted in an email to The Verge that the company’s likeness detection was developed in partnership with the entertainment industry. Malon said that in the first half of 2026, YouTube removed over 95 percent of the videos that were reported through the program for takedowns.

AI-generated content on Meta platforms often has labels identifying it as such. Some content, like realistic videos of people or audio of AI-generated voices, is required to have an AI label. Still images, on the other hand, are exempt from the labeling requirement — meaning that the fake image of Mia Goth wouldn’t have required a disclosure under Meta’s rules. The company also introduced “AI-generated profile” labels that apply to an entire account where the avatar depicted doesn’t exist in the real world after an influx of AI influencer types flooded the platform.

But there is a cottage industry of accounts that pump out AI-generated imagery of real people that the algorithm seems to like. Some of the content isn’t obviously nefarious, just kind of strange: There’s a genre on Facebook, for example, of AI-generated movie premiere videos where the original cast (in costume) walks the red carpet next to actors for a recast version. One profile advertises $29-per-month online courses on how to make money through AI content.

AI-generated celebrity content also has the capacity to truly trick people into thinking it’s real, as in the case of the image (and account) depicting Goth. The specific post that went viral suggested the actress was taunting LaBeouf, who has been accused of abuse by another ex-partner and was filmed in 2015 saying he “would have killed [Goth]” if he had continued to argue with her. The fake image was attention-grabbing, shady, and timely — in other words, perfect for social media virality but a potential liability for the parties involved. The incident illustrates the failures of trust and safety provisions that are supposed to protect against this kind of confusion.

On social media, AI content mingles freely with standard-issue reposts of real images. And even when one page is taken down, there are others that continue to push out content: Another Instagram account — still live — with over 300,000 followers posts a steady stream of pictures and videos of Johansson, which appear to be a mix of authentic images and AI-generated content. One of its most popular posts is what looks to be an AI image of Johansson with nearly half a million likes. There is no AI disclosure, in line with Meta’s rules. The deepfaked Johansson lies on a couch, bare feet displayed prominently. It is not her, obviously — but her fans in the comments either don’t know or don’t care.