Brad Pitt is the latest celebrity to have their likeness emulated, albeit poorly, by scammers looking to bilk innocent victims out of large sums of money.
As a TMZ report notes, whilst citing France’s BFM TV, itself citing TF1, a 53-year-old woman in the country has gone public with her experience of allegedly being scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by someone who utilized some AI-enabled fake images of the F1 and Moneyball actor.
In short, here’s what’s alleged to have happened: The woman, identified as Anne in reports, ultimately had an estimated 830,000 euros (roughly $853,000) taken from her in a scam alleged to have kicked off back in early 2023. At the time, the woman alleges, she was contacted by someone falsely proclaiming to be Pitt’s mother, followed by someone (also falsely) claiming to be Pitt himself. Eventually, the woman, who is reported to have been married to a millionaire at the time, is hit with an alleged marriage offer from the person posing as Pitt.
From there, alleged claims (again, false) of cancer from the fake Pitt are brought into the mix, with the alleged victim ultimately divorcing her well-to-do husband. Later, the woman realized she had been duped, leading to the filing of a complaint and an investigation that reportedly remains ongoing as of this writing. Reports also state that the alleged victim of the scam is presently dealing with “severe depression.”
To be absolutely clear, the photo above, captured by Kym Illman in Abu Dhabi last December, is a very real photo of the actor and producer. As for those belligerently ludicrous AI ones at the heart of this story, you can see a selection of those (the same selection included in the aforementioned BFM TV report) below.
It should go without saying that this isn’t the first time that AI fuckery has been utilized in the name of nefariousness. Last August, for example, Jenna Ortega revealed that she left the platform formerly known as Twitter due to the proliferation of AI-made images of herself.
