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NOPE
Medium reported severity

Technology journalist Taylor Lorenz says her stalker is using Sora to make AI videos of her

On 2 October 2025, shortly after OpenAI's Sora 2 video app launched, journalist Taylor Lorenz posted on X that someone gave her stalker an invite to Sora and that he was already making AI videos of her. She wrote that he runs hundreds of accounts dedicated to her, has hired photographers to surveil her, appears at events she attends and impersonates her friends and family online to gather information. She said Sora let her block and delete unapproved content showing her image. Futurism and The Canary reported her posts. The videos were not inspected, no police or platform action beyond her use of the block-and-delete option is reported, and how the videos were made is unclear.

AI system
Sora
OpenAI
Occurred
Oct 2025
Reported
2 October 2025
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Depicted or impersonated the person
Reported harm
Psychological DistressExploitation or Abuse
Whose AI use
Someone else’s AI use
Setting
Privacy · Relationships
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account
6 claims: 6 reported. 6 open questions
People reported harmed
At least 1 person

AI system as recorded: Sora 2

Reported harm

Lorenz wrote that it is scary to think what AI is doing to feed her stalker's delusions and called the man dangerous. She reports that he already makes AI videos of her, alongside a longer pattern of surveillance and online impersonation. These are her own public statements. Whether the videos were distributed is not reported.

What remains unknown

  • The content of the AI videos is not described in any inspected source and the reviewer did not see them.
  • Whether the videos were shared, and with whom, is not reported in the inspected sources.
  • When the stalking began is not stated. Only the AI use is dated, between the Sora 2 launch and 2 October 2025.
  • How the stalker made videos of the journalist in Sora is unclear according to Futurism.
  • No police report, platform enforcement action or OpenAI statement about this case is reported in the inspected sources.
  • The stalker has not been identified in any inspected source and the man's own account is absent.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. Lorenz states that the stalker is making AI videos of her with Sora and that Sora let her block and delete unapproved content showing her image. Futurism says it is unclear how the stalker used Sora to depict her. The videos were not inspected by the reviewer or, as far as the sources say, by the outlets.

6 claims: 6 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported On 2 October 2025 the journalist posted that her stalker had been given an invite to Sora and was already making AI videos of her.

Causal attribution. The account is the journalist's own public post. Futurism and The Canary relay it. Nobody outside her has inspected the videos or confirmed which account produced them.

Reported The journalist says the man runs hundreds of accounts dedicated to her, has hired photographers to surveil her, shows up at events she attends and impersonates her friends and family members online to gather information.

Causal attribution. These conduct claims are the journalist's own and are not corroborated by any inspected record. They describe the wider stalking that predates the AI use.

  • x.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    runs hundreds (yes hundreds) of accounts dedicated to me.
  • x.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    This is a man who has hired photographers to surveil me, shows up at events I am at, impersonates my friends and family members online to gather info
Reported The journalist says Sora offered an option to block and delete unapproved content showing her image, and Futurism reports she was able to block and delete such videos, although the man may already have downloaded them.

Causal attribution. The block-and-delete account is the journalist's. The possibility of earlier downloads is Futurism's inference and is not established.

Reported The journalist wrote that it is scary to think what AI is doing to feed her stalker's delusions and called him a dangerous man.

Causal attribution. These are the journalist's own characterisations. Her posts do not describe the content of the videos.

Reported Futurism reports that it is unclear how the stalker was able to use Sora to depict the journalist, and that OpenAI says the app blocks uploads of photos with faces.

Causal attribution. This is Futurism's observation. It marks the mechanism of the alleged use as unresolved.

Reported OpenAI launched Sora 2 on 1 October 2025, and the journalist's two posts are dated 2 October 2025.

Causal attribution. The launch date is The Canary's statement. The post dates are the platform timestamps on the journalist's own posts.

Sources

4 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Reports the two posts. Futurism did not verify the videos. Applies to s3.

Read via an Internet Archive capture. Reports the second post. The Canary did not verify the videos. Applies to s4.

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.

The inspected sources do not state where the stalker or the journalist was located when the videos were made. The archive lists USA, which no inspected source supports as an event location. No court proceeding is reported.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-29: The journalist's own posts on X (2 October 2025) are the primary source. Futurism and The Canary relay those posts and are in the same independence group. All claims are reported. The journalist is named because she posted publicly under her own name about this event. The stalker is not named or identified. No imagery is described beyond the kind of content (AI videos). The event month is October 2025, established by the Sora 2 launch and the posts.

People reported harmed in this case

At least 1 person

0 AI participants · 1 other person harmed

One person, the journalist, reports being targeted. Her friends and family members are described as impersonated online but no harm to them is reported, so they are not counted.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Technology journalist Taylor Lorenz says her stalker is using Sora to make AI videos of her. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-taylor-lorenz-reports-stalker-making-sora-ai-videos-of-her

BibTeX

@misc{2025_taylor_lorenz_reports_stalker_making_sora_ai_videos_of_her,
  title = {Technology journalist Taylor Lorenz says her stalker is using Sora to make AI videos of her},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-taylor-lorenz-reports-stalker-making-sora-ai-videos-of-her}
}

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