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An unbalanced stalker posed as an unwitting man’s fiancé, claiming they had a child together. To sell the act — and live out her obsessive fantasy — she used AI to edit images that showed them going on dates together, and even that she was pregnant with his child. And she was doing this for years.
It’s a saga that’s somehow even more bizarre than it sounds. The man, pseudonymously identified as Luke, had no idea that there was a woman out there who had an obsessive fixation on him, and only found out about it from his sister a few months ago. She was alerted to the photos that the stalker had been posting after her friend spotted them, and made a now viral series of posts on Threads documenting their bewilderment.
“It is traumatizing to learn that your pictures were used in such an elaborate narrative,” Luke told The Straits Times.
“We were very worried and concerned that this stranger has photos and videos of my children stored in her phone and was sharing them online as and when she likes,” his sister added.
Luke didn’t actually know the woman, but it turned out that they were once schoolmates 15 years ago. “I spoke no more than two sentences to her when we were in school,” he told The Straits Times.
A healthy childhood crush it was not. On top of fabricating photos of themselves on dates, she also cranked out AI images of him holding their supposed newborn baby. Friends of Luke’s sister say that the women used the AI-faked photos to try add them on different social media platforms.
Some of the claims the stalker made, according to Luke’s sister: that she had been with him since 2011; that she was pregnant with his child; and that she’s engaged and planned to get married with him this December, even sending out wedding invitations. After Luke’s sister’s post went viral, she said that a local bakery reached out to say that the stalker order a cake from them — for the imaginary baby.
All of this is already creepy and upsetting, but where the stalker really crossed the line is when she used the sister’s photos of her son, niece, and nephew. “Now we are so paranoid and so scared to post anything about the kids,” the sister wrote on Threads.
It’s another example of how generative AI can fuel obsessive delusions and empower creeps to fulfill their specific fantasies, including stalkers. The journalist Taylor Lorenz said she was targeted by a stalker that used OpenAI’s Sora AI video generating app to make videos of her which he posted to hundreds of social media accounts. In several lawsuits, some women allege that their stalkers were spurred on by conversations with ChatGPT.
“We are still in so much shock that a person is capable to do all of this with the help of AI,” Luke‘s sister wrote on social media. “Shows how much AI can ruin a person’s life literally.”
“She was abusing the power of AI like mad,” she added. “I know the moment she found out about AI she was the happiest person on earth case she can finally do crazy sh*t like this.”