A wave of anonymous Instagram and TikTok accounts is taking stand-up routines from working comedians, mostly women, and re-performing them through AI-generated female avatars in revealing outfits. Chortle reported on the trend in early October, and Digital Music News picked it up on 16 October, drawing also on earlier Hollywood Reporter coverage. The format is essentially a thirst trap built on material other people wrote and performed, and DMN presents it as proof that AI's reach now extends from music into comedy.
“There needs to be accountability when that work is stolen”
Julia Jasunas, comedian, to Chortle · chortle.co.uk ↗
The clips gather hundreds of thousands of views and point viewers to OnlyFans pages. Many commenters seem to believe the avatars are real people. One prolific account, "Aylen Skye", is even described by Gemini as if she existed, and its best-known clip, a copy of a Sketch Show skit, passed 660,000 views on TikTok. The account copying George Brett Olson has more than 300,000 followers, and the one copying Julia Jasunas about 250,000. In the image DMN ran, Olson's imitator reproduced both his joke and his outfit.
Chortle names Jasunas, Char Ramtin and Olivia Carter as targets, while Digital Music News adds Olson and Hannah Berner. Jasunas finds the situation unsettling and says the platform offers no support. She points out that the fake account was verified while she struggled to get verified herself, and that other comedians' genuine accounts have been removed after false plagiarism claims. She began posting her sets online precisely to timestamp her work against theft, so that she could show she wrote them first. Even so, the accounts doing the copying are anonymous, and the platform's tools have not helped her or her peers.
Recourse looks thin. Olson and Jasunas both say the copies break no terms of service. Instagram head Adam Mosseri told The Hollywood Reporter that banning AI content would not be practical, though he said wholesale copying of others' material was something he would look at. On Meta's response the two outlets differ: Chortle says Meta did not reply, while Digital Music News cites a Meta spokesperson saying YouTube and TikTok face the same problem, which may simply reflect the different dates of the two pieces.
No action has been announced, and nothing in the reporting suggests a change to the platforms' rules is close. Mosseri said he would talk to his team, with no timeline given.
Sources · 2