AI incident ·
Purportedly AI-Generated Images Reportedly Used During Four-Year Catfishing Campaign Targeting Welsh Teenager
In brief
An AI system built by Deepfake Technology Developers, Synthetic Media Generation Technology Developers and 1 other and deployed by Elha Mai Weston, Deepfake Creators and 3 others allegedly harmed Sasha Davies, Victims Of Catfishing and 5 others.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 2 reports
What happened
A Welsh teenager reportedly endured a nearly four-year online impersonation campaign in which another teenager created fake social media accounts using her photographs and, later, AI-generated images depicting her. The campaign reportedly attracted more than 100,000 followers, led strangers to believe they knew the victim, and resulted in a High Court settlement and damages award.
Laws that address this harm
No recorded instrument yet addresses this use case where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (2)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Elha Mai Weston, Deepfake Creators, Catfishers, Online Impersonators, Synthetic Media Creators
- Alleged developer
- Deepfake Technology Developers, Synthetic Media Generation Technology Developers, Synthetic Image Generation Technology Developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Sasha Davies, Victims Of Catfishing, Victims Of Deepfake Abuse, Targets Of Online Impersonation, Teenagers, Minors, Epistemic Integrity
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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- Intent
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- Timing
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- Harm level
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- Sectors
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- Countries
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Source record: incident #1592 on the AI Incident Database · all 2 reports