Meta has taken down a Facebook page that William Shatner said was using AI to publish fake news stories about him. Bleeding Cool reported the removal on 3 April, a day after the Star Trek actor went public.
Shatner, 95, said he waited until 2 April so the warning would not look like an April Fool's joke. According to him, the page belonged to The Beanstalk Functions Group, which presents itself as an event planner in South Africa, and it claimed he had stage 4 brain cancer, was dying and had clashed with Erika Kirk. Most posts used an AI image of him, all were monetised, and each linked to a site on a web host whose chief executive he had also publicly asked to take the stories down. Facebook support, he said, would not remove the page while fans shared the stories and sent his family messages of support, while the people behind the page earned money from the traffic.
He urged followers to doubt any strange story about him that did not come from his verified accounts, calling this the downside of AI in the wrong hands. After Entertainment Weekly asked about it, Meta said the page had been removed for breaking its policies.
Shatner has used AI on his own terms before, recording more than 45 hours of answers over five days with StoryFile so an interactive version of him can take questions about his life and career.
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