In retrospect, the Instagram post should have raised more red flags. The image was intended to show actress Mia Goth, a few days after filing for divorce from actor and filmmaker Shia LaBeouf, posing with a t-shirt with a clear 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 Pearlwho 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, like The edge It was reportedly AI-generated, posted by an account that Goth’s rep said they had complained about before on Instagram for posting “AI fake images” of Goth. Meta allows users to purchase “verified” blue checkmarks, even if the account is not managed by a prominent figure or is not an official page.
“The fact that this fan account meets Instagram’s criteria to qualify for a ‘blue check’ is baffling on a fundamental level,” said Christine Tripicchio, Goth’s representative. The edge in an email. “Beyond that, it is incomprehensible that Instagram evidently prioritizes the spread of falsified and manipulated images over the protection and integrity of the image of a public figure.”
Due to the news of their divorce, the post spread to celebrity gossip outlets and that coverage, in turn, spread the post through Google search. Searches for the actress and the shirt triggered an AI-generated overview that said Goth was taking “a clear swipe at his ex, Shia LaBeouf, following his recent divorce filing,” citing in turn the aforementioned blogs. A section in Google search results labeled “Mia Goth turns heads on Instagram by wearing racy ‘My ex is my biggest fan’ t-shirt” appeared 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 most memorable (and controversial) use cases have involved famous people. Historically, the human subjects in question have not responded well to digital cloning and use as toys: an AI-generated Drake-like song was removed 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 that posted AI-generated content of hers last year. Taylor Swift publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president in 2024, saying she felt moved to clarify her position after Donald Trump posted fake images suggesting she endorsed him.
There was a time when everyone, even the rich and famous, was grappling with the regulations around a new technology. Now, the amount of AI content online is only growing, and it’s unclear 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 her bare feet prominently displayed, included contact information so companies could advertise on the account, along with links to Patreon and Telegram channels that sell subscriptions. Off-platform content used Johansson’s name and image (AI) to advertise adult content. Another account posts realistic AI-generated images of actors and musicians like Millie Bobby Brown, Zendaya and Grande, always partially naked or in sexualized positions. Some accounts have their own niche, like “stranger things actors who marry each other.”
After The edge When Meta was asked about eight accounts posting celebrity deepfake content, spokesperson Alex Dziedzan said the company had removed some of the accounts.. Two of them, the Gothic one and Johansson’s, seem to have been demolished.
“We do not allow accounts to use someone’s image to impersonate that individual, regardless of whether the content is authentic or AI-generated,” Dziedzan said in an email.
Taylor Swift holds a glass and raps “Burning Bridges” by Drake, expletives and all. “I’m out of a [Quaalude]”It makes my body tingle,” she sings, wearing the dress from the fateful moment at the 2009 VMAs. The video is AI, obviously, and has 1.8 million views on Instagram.
“I don’t think his PR team would like him saying the N-word,” someone commented.
Instagram is full of videos like this, which often inexplicably follow very specific formats. A clip of AI Shrek doing the same thing as AI Swift has 3.1 million views. Here’s Steve Jobs, strutting to a different Drake song with a bottle of champagne in hand (371,000 views). There is also an identical version of Lionel Messi (2.1 million views) posted by a different account. Here are Formula 1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen lip-syncing 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.
“Oh, he was wearing a white tuxedo,” one fan helpfully verified.
In the absence of national right of publicity laws, AI-generated content featuring real people is being litigated at the platform level. (The US Take It Down Act, which became law in 2025, specifically criminalizes the distribution of non-consensual intimate images, including AI-generated content, and requires platforms to remove them within 48 hours.)
YouTube has image detection, perhaps the most robust deepfake monitoring and removal system. Under the program, YouTube will scan its platform for visual matches for a person (and, as of recently, similar sounds) and allow them to request removal of content. Not all deletion requests are accepted; The company says it considers public interest, newsworthiness and consent when evaluating removals. Initially, the program was open to public figures such as celebrities, content creators, politicians and journalists, but now covers all adults 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 posted about them on YouTube, but it often ends up being “quite benign or adding to their overall business,” Amjad Hanif, vice president of creator products, said at a press briefing in March.
Still images are exempt from Meta’s AI tagging requirement
YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon said in an email to The edge that the company’s similarity detection was developed in partnership with the entertainment industry. Malon said that in the first half of 2026, YouTube removed more than 95 percent of videos that were reported through the takedown program.
AI-generated content on meta-platforms often has tags that identify it as such. Some content, such as realistic videos of people or audio of AI-generated voices, must have an AI label. Still images, on the other hand, are exempt from the labeling requirement, meaning the fake image of Mia Goth would not have required a disclosure under Meta’s rules. The company also introduced “AI-generated profile” tags that apply to an entire account where the depicted avatar does not exist in the real world after an influx of AI influencer types flooded the platform.
But there is a cottage industry of accounts that generate AI-generated images 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 alongside the actors for a recast version. One profile advertises online courses for $29 a month on how to make money through AI content.
AI-generated celebrity content also has the ability to trick people into believing it’s real, as in the case of the image (and account) depicting Goth. The specific post that went viral suggested the actress was mocking LaBeouf, who has been accused of abuse by another ex-partner and was filmed in 2015 saying he “would have killed.” [Goth]” if I had continued arguing 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 the trust and safety provisions that are supposed to protect against this type of confusion.
On social media, AI content is freely mixed with standard real-image posts. And even when one page is removed, there are others that continue to post content: another Instagram account (still active) with more than 300,000 followers posts a constant stream of photos and videos of Johansson, which appear to be a mix of authentic images and AI-generated content. One of her most popular posts is what appears to be an artificial image of Johansson with almost half a million likes. There is no AI disclosure, according to Meta rules. Johansson, forged, lies on a couch, his bare feet visible. Obviously it’s not her, but her fans in the comments don’t know it or don’t know it. careful.
