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NOPE
Low reported severity

Daughter reports mother trusted a purported Owen Wilson deepfake and false job offer

A public Reddit family account says a mother trusted someone posing as Owen Wilson, despite her daughters' warnings. The poster says the contact moved from a game to WhatsApp and sent a video as proof of identity, while offering a supposed Warner Bros job and plans for a shared home. LADbible describes that attached video as AI-generated. The mother reportedly received small training payments and had not been asked for money or banking information. No financial loss is established.

AI system
Unidentified video tool
Unknown
Occurred
Event date unknown
Reported
17 May 2025
Event location
United States
What the AI did
Communicated with the person
Reported harm
Impaired Judgment
Whose AI use
Someone else’s AI use
Setting
Relationships · Finance
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account
3 claims: 3 reported. 2 open questions
People reported harmed
At least 1 person

AI system as recorded: Purported AI-generated celebrity impersonation video

What Happened

A public Reddit family account says a mother trusted someone posing as Owen Wilson, despite her daughters' warnings. The poster says the contact moved from a game to WhatsApp and sent a video as proof of identity, while offering a supposed Warner Bros job and plans for a shared home. LADbible describes that attached video as AI-generated. The mother reportedly received small training payments and had not been asked for money or banking information. No financial loss is established.

Reported harm

The daughter's account describes her mother continuing to trust an apparent celebrity impersonator and a false job offer despite family warnings. A monetary loss is not reported.

What remains unknown

  • The beginning of the contact and the video's generation method are unknown. The report date is not used as the event date.
  • Whether the mother later sent money, ended the contact or obtained a genuine job is not established.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. LADbible describes the video sent directly to the mother as AI-generated. The archived post establishes that a video was sent, without independently establishing its generation method. The actual video was not inspected.

3 claims: 3 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported The original family account says the mother was communicating with someone claiming to be Owen Wilson and that he sent a video as proof. LADbible describes the video as AI-generated.

Causal attribution. One family account and a LADbible relay of it form one reporting chain. Belief and deception are reported, without technical verification of the video or an established financial loss.

Reported The poster says she and her sister had warned their mother that it was a scam but the mother continued to trust the contact.

Causal attribution. One family account and a LADbible relay of it form one reporting chain. Belief and deception are reported, without technical verification of the video or an established financial loss.

Reported The mother reportedly received small Cash App payments for training for a supposed Warner Bros job and said she had not been asked for money or banking information.

Causal attribution. One family account and a LADbible relay of it form one reporting chain. Belief and deception are reported, without technical verification of the video or an established financial loss.

Sources

2 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

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

The original post explicitly labels the account [US] and describes the mother's local coastal town. A more precise location is omitted.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-30: A concrete family account and its journalistic relay describe an apparent AI impersonation sent to a mother and her continued belief despite warnings. Claims remain attributed and the case is undated. No monetary loss or genuine involvement by the actor or studio is asserted.

People reported harmed in this case

At least 1 person

0 AI participants · 1 other person harmed

One mother is the person described as deceived. The daughters, father and impersonated actor are not added to the harm count.

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). Daughter reports mother trusted a purported Owen Wilson deepfake and false job offer. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-us-reported-owen-wilson-video-impersonation-mother

BibTeX

@misc{2025_us_reported_owen_wilson_video_impersonation_mother,
  title = {Daughter reports mother trusted a purported Owen Wilson deepfake and false job offer},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-us-reported-owen-wilson-video-impersonation-mother}
}

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