Hollywood is fed up: Deepfakes are damaging celebrities' reputations: “I don’t want fans of mine to be hurt”

Deep Fake Artificial Intelligence has become a major issue for the Hollywood film industry with concerns about its negative impact continually growing. The legality and morality of these practices are now under intense scrutiny and Congress is now looking at new legislation aiming to penalize those behind illicit uses of AI, including an updated version of the No Fakes Act, which aims to hold creators and platforms liable for unauthorized AI-generated images, videos and sound.

Recent examples have seen the likes of Scarlett Johansson, tom Hanks and Brad Pitt depicted by fake AI imagery and Hollywood is now saying ‘no more’.

Radio personality Steve Harvey is a well known voice across US airwaves but scammers have been using AI-generated versions of Harvey’s image, voice and likeness for scams.

The 68-year-old is now speaking up by advocating for legislation and penalties for the people behind these scams — and the platforms hosting them as Harvey admits that 2025 have seen these stunts at ‘an all time high’.

“My concern now is the people that it affects. I don’t want fans of mine or people who aren’t fans to be hurt by something” stated the famous radio personality.

AI celeb backlash

“There is a 1,000-foot wave coming regarding AI that several progressive countries, not including the United States, have responded to in a responsible manner,” Scarlett Johansson said in a February statement to CNN after an AI-generated video depicting a phony version of her responding to Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks went viral.

“Back in 2018 there were maybe 19,000 pieces of Deepfake content,” Vermillio CEO Dan Neely stated in an interview. “Today, there are roughly a million created every minute.”

That’s where companies like Vermillio AI come in. The company, which has partnered with major talent agencies and movie studios, uses a platform called TraceID that tracks AI instances of their clients and automates the normally cumbersome take-down requests.

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