Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t expect to be at the forefront of the artificial intelligence debate in Hollywood. But she didn’t have a choice.
The Oscar-winning actor recently called out Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on social media, saying the company ignored her requests to take down a fake AI-generated advertisement on Instagram that had been on the platform for months.
The ad, which used footage from an interview Curtis gave to MSNBC about January’s Los Angeles area wildfires, manipulated her voice to make it appear that she was endorsing a dental product, Curtis said.
“I was not looking to become the poster child of internet fakery, and I’m certainly not the first,” Curtis told The Times by phone Tuesday morning.
The ad has since been removed.
What happened to Curtis is part of a larger issue actors are dealing with amid the rise of generative AI technology, which has allowed their images and voices to be altered in ways they haven’t authorized. Those changes can be wildly misleading.
Images and likenesses of celebrities including Tom Hanks, Taylor Swift and Scarlett Johansson have been manipulated through AI to promote products and ideas they never actually endorsed.
AI technology has made it easier for people to make these fake videos, which can proliferate online at a speed that is challenging for social media platforms to take down. Some are calling on social media firms to do more to police misinformation on their platforms.
“We are standing at the turning point, and I think we need to take some action,” Curtis said.
Curtis first became aware of the fake AI ad about a month and a half ago when a friend asked her about the video. The “Everything Everywhere All At Once” and “Halloween” actor then flagged the ad for her agents, lawyers and publicists, who directed her to send a cease and desist letter to Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram.
Nothing happened.
“It’s like a vacuum,” Curtis said. “There are no people. You can’t reach anybody. You have an email, you send an email, you never get anything back.”
Two weeks later, another friend flagged the same fake AI video. When Curtis wrote to her team, they assured her they went through the proper channels and they did everything they could do, she said.
“I went through the proper channels,” Curtis said. “There should be a methodology to this. I understand there’s going to be a misuse of this stuff, but then there’s no avenue of getting any satisfaction. So then it’s lawlessness, because if you have no way of rectifying it, what do you do?”
Curtis was concerned about the nefarious ways that people could alter the voices and images of other people, including Pope Leo XIV, who has identified AI as one of the challenges facing humanity. What if someone used AI to attribute ideas to the pope that he didn’t actually support?
Inspired by the danger of that possibility, she made her scathing Instagram post, tagging Zuckerberg, after she was unable to directly message him.
“My name is Jamie Lee Curtis and I have gone through every proper channel to ask you and your team to take down this totally AI fake commercial for some bulls— that I didn’t endorse,” Curtis wrote in her post on Monday. “… I’ve been told that if I ask you directly, maybe you will encourage your team to police it and remove it.”
The post generated more than 55,000 likes.
“I’ve done commercials for people all my life, so if they can make a fake commercial with me, that hurts my brand,” Curtis said in an interview. “If my brand is authenticity, you’re co-opting my brand for nefarious gains in the future.”
After she posted, a neighbor shared with her an email of someone at Meta who could help her. Curtis emailed that person (whom she declined to name), copied her team and attached the Instagram posts. Within an hour of sending the email, the fake AI ad was taken down, Curtis said.
“It worked!” Curtis wrote on Instagram on Monday in all caps. “Yay internet! Shame has [its] value! Thanks all who chimed in and helped rectify!”
Meta on Monday confirmed the fake ad was taken down.
“They violate our policies prohibiting fraud, scams and deceptive practices,” said Meta spokesman Andy Stone in an email.
As the technology continues to become more widely available, there are efforts underway at tech companies to identify AI-generated content and to take down material that violates standards.
Organizations like actors guild SAG-AFTRA are also advocating for more laws that address AI, including deep fakes. Both the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023 hinged in part on demands for more protections against job losses from AI.
Curtis said she would have wanted the fake AI ad to be taken down immediately and would like to see technology companies, not just Meta, come up with safeguards and direct access to people policing “this wild, wild west called the internet.”
“It got the attention, but I’m also a public figure,” Curtis said. “So how does someone who’s not a public figure get any satisfaction? I want to represent everyone. I don’t want it to just be celebrities. I wanted to use that as an example to say this is wrong.”
