Last week, news spread that a 22-year-old Canadian actor named Saint Von Colucci had died after undergoing twelve cosmetic surgeries for the equivalent of two million kronor.

He would have done the operations to impersonate Jimin in the Korean pop group BTS, before an appearance in a Korean television drama.

But everything points to the news being a scam. And it is probably the first known case where AI is used to trick the media into spreading fake news, writes Al Jazeera.

Signs that an AI has created the images

The source was a press release from a PR agency whose website was registered just a few weeks ago. When Al Jazeera called the number associated with the agency, they initially received no answer – but later received a text message saying "what the hell do you want".

The press release was written in clumsy English, referenced a hospital in Seoul that does not exist, and contained links to the actor's Instagram account that could not be opened.

Saint Von Colucci is described as an actor and songwriter for several K-pop stars, but the album he is supposed to be behind cannot be found on the streaming services.

The pictures of him are blurry and, according to Al Jazeera, his hands look strange in at least one picture. It is a common sign that it is an AI that produced the image.

And an AI detector that analyzed the images shows that it is with 75 percent certainty an AI-generated, writes Variety.

The "news" got feet

The Daily Mail, which was the first to publish, has since unpublished the article. But before that, the "news" had time to get its feet – among other things, Aftonbladet picked it up, but has also unpublished.

"Of course, what we publish must be correct and this time we seem to have gone wrong. We can only regret that, says Martin Schori, deputy editorial director at Aftonbladet.

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In the clip you hear Karim Jebari, researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm explain what AI is. Photo: SVT