A former Nashville meteorologist said she was “devastated” when imposter social media accounts claiming to be her began to solicit personal information and money from fans last fall.
“These accounts used fake pictures that showed my face on someone else’s semi-nude body,” Bree Smith, who worked for Nashville TV station NewsChannel 5, testified Wednesday. “They also made fake videos that used my face and my name to try to convince people it was the real me.”
Smith is now pushing lawmakers to outlaw non-consensual “deepfakes” — videos, photographs and audio files created by artificial intelligence that depict things that did not occur without consent from the people depicted.
In the past several months, Smith said dozens — if not hundreds — of imposter accounts have posed as her, posting about fake contests and direct-messaging fans and friends asking for help, promising sexual acts and soliciting money for hotel stays.
“I felt humiliated and scared,” Smith said at a Tennessee House Criminal Justice Subcommittee meeting. “I didn’t know what to do or how to fight it, and I didn’t know how to protect the viewers and the people that trusted me online from being subject to this kind of extortion.”