A Wall Street banker\u2019s explosive sexual harassment lawsuit against a female executive has triggered a torrent of salacious falsehoods muddying the waters \u2014 with AI-created deepfakes and memes fueling the frenzy.<\/p>\n
The social media storm erupted soon after the suit \u2014 packed with allegations of sexual abuse, coercion, and racial harassment \u2014 was filed last month<\/a> in a New York court by a former JPMorgan Chase banker identified by US media as 35-year-old Chirayu Rana.<\/p>\n Lawyers for the defendant Lorna Hajdini, who remains at the bank, have called the accusations fabricated. JPMorgan Chase has said it investigated the claims and found them meritless.<\/p>\n But even before any legal outcome, the suit\u2019s tawdry claims have become a source of public fascination, spawning a wave of AI-generated clips and sexually suggestive memes \u2014 at a time when high-profile sexual harassment cases against women remain rare.<\/p>\n \u201cThis trend hints at how AI is going to increasingly pollute our feeds and pollute public discourse on both important and frivolous topics,\u201d Timothy Caulfield, a misinformation researcher from the University of Alberta in Canada, told AFP.<\/p>\n \u201cThis content can be produced incredibly quickly and can be specifically framed to play to our fears, interests, and grievances. In the attention economy, it is all about clicks. Find a trending story and exploit.\u201d<\/p>\n One hyper-realistic AI video circulating on Elon Musk\u2019s platform X purports to show the pair laughing and drinking wine at a restaurant, with a voiceover claiming \u201cthey are on a date\u201d.<\/p>\n The video also surfaced on other platforms, including Meta-owned Facebook, where some posts used it to baselessly claim that the lawsuit was \u201cfake\u201d and the two had been involved in a \u201cconsensual relationship\u201d.<\/p>\n