Scores of AI-generated personas built around fabricated female profiles have been harvesting material from working comedians and republishing it on Instagram, where the posts have accumulated millions of views and directed audiences toward paid platforms including OnlyFans and Fanvue.
Follower counts stretching into the hundreds of thousands have accumulated around computer-generated characters — many presented to online viewers in sparse clothing — that draw their comedic material from routines originally developed and performed by human comedians, according to a television news report published Friday.
A computer-generated persona operating under the name Tiffany Sloane drew an Instagram following of more than 375,000 accounts within a matter of weeks after her earliest posts went live in September, a news outlet reported. A single stand-up clip associated with the account drew upwards of 7 million views across a span of fewer than fourteen days.
A broadcast outlet that published its findings on Friday — having traced AI-generated female personas to the material of eight stand-up performers — also noted that Sloane's Instagram profile carried a link to an OnlyFans page within its Highlights section.
One of those performers was George Brett Olson, who found that Sloane had already used a nearly identical version of one of her jokes. On Oct. 3, Olson posted an Instagram image placing the two performers side by side, with the AI persona's outfit — a salmon-toned shirt paired with khaki shorts — closely echoing what the actual comedian had worn against the same backdrop.
Olson told a news outlet that watching the material used in full view of others left her with an unsettled feeling, and that the only adjustment made to the routine was to its closing line. Following Olson's public call-out, the account posted a brief apology stating it would not repeat the behaviour, then removed both the video in question and a number of other clips.
One AI-generated account operating under the name Aylen Skye — built around a blonde digital persona — drew around 250,000 Instagram followers through a feed built on comedy material taken without credit from other creators.
Stand-up comedian Julia Jasunas found that an account under the name Skye had copied one of her routines about renting a room to an attractive man verbatim, preserving even her filler sounds. The same account directed visitors to adult content on Fanvue, a platform that positions itself as a venue for AI-generated creators to earn revenue. Jasunas told a news outlet that having jokes taken was one thing, but having that material channelled into a monetized, sexualized context for another party's benefit was a separate matter entirely.
That concern echoed findings from a September 30 investigation by a news outlet, which reported that comedian Olivia Carter had identified multiple AI-generated accounts repurposing her joke about asking out her personal trainer — a routine she had previously performed on a streaming platform and a late-night program. Two of the accounts drawing scrutiny carried follower counts of 180,000 and 240,000 respectively, figures that exceeded Carter's own tally of around 113,000 at that point in time.
Jasunas reported that Instagram's review process found her complaint about the Skye account did not meet the platform's impersonation criteria, given that the AI-generated persona had not claimed to be her — despite using content she had created. Those who reported content on behalf of Sloane's supporters received a response stating that it did not breach the platform's community standards, Olson noted.
According to a news outlet, an attorney advised Olson that pursuing litigation over the OnlyFans account would bring little practical return unless the account was generating millions of dollars in revenue.
A public tag directed at Instagram chief Adam Mosseri on social media prompted him to address the issue. Mosseri indicated that Meta held a strong commitment to routing more traffic toward creators of original content, and that the company was working to determine how AI-run accounts copying that work in full should be handled. Mosseri noted that banning AI-generated content from the platform was not something he viewed as workable, adding that detection would only grow more difficult over time and that such material was not uniformly low-quality — though he acknowledged a notable volume of low-effort posts did exist.
