French woman tricked by Brad Pitt AI has to mock him online

A French woman who was swindled out of €830,000 (£700,000; $850,000) by fraudsters posing as actor Brad Pitt has faced a wave of ridicule, leading French broadcaster TF1 to pull a program about her.

The primetime program, which aired on Sunday, attracted national attention as interior designer Anne, 53, was believed to have been dating Pitt for a year and a half.

Since then, he has told a popular French YouTube show that he was not “a madman or an idiot”: “I just played, I admit it, and that’s why I came forward, because I’m not the only one.”

A representative for Pitt told the US channel Entertainment Weekly that it is “horrible that scammers take advantage of the strong connection that fans have with celebrities” and that people should not respond to unsolicited online publicity “especially from actors who do not have a social media presence”.

Hundreds of social media users mocked Anne, who the program said had lost her life savings and had tried to take her own life three times since the fraud was revealed.

Netflix France posted a post about X with “four (real) movies with Brad Pitt,” while in a now-deleted post, Toulouse FC said: “Hi Anne, Brad told us he’d be at the stadium on Wednesday. . . and you?”

The club has since apologized for the post.

On Tuesday, TF1 said it had pulled the segment on Anne after her testimony sparked “a wave of harassment”, although the program can still be found online.

In the report, Anne said her ordeal began when she downloaded Instagram in February 2023, while still married to a wealthy businessman.

She was immediately contacted by someone who claimed to be Pitt’s mother, Jane Etta, who told Anne that her son “needs a woman like her.”

Someone who wanted to be Pitt contacted her the next day, which raised the alarm for Anne. “But as someone who is not very used to social media, I didn’t really know what was happening to me,” she said.

At one point, “Brad Pitt” said he tried to send luxury gifts but couldn’t clear customs because his bank accounts were frozen. Due to the divorce proceedings with actress Angelina JolieAsking Anne to transfer €9000 to the fraudsters.

“Like a fool, I paid… Every time I hesitated, he managed to dispel my doubts,” he said.

Demands for money escalated when the fake Pitt told Anne he needed money to pay for kidney cancer treatment, sending her several AI-generated photos of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed. “I looked for those photos on the internet but couldn’t find them, so I thought that meant he took those selfies just for me,” she said.

Meanwhile, Anne and her husband divorced, and they gave her 775,000 euros, all of which went to the fraudsters.

“I told myself that maybe I was saving a man’s life,” said Anne, who is in remission from cancer.

Anne’s daughter, now 22, told TF1 that for more than a year she tried to “make her mother see reason” but that her mother was too emotional. “It hurt to see how naive he was,” she said.

When pictures of the real Brad Pitt with his new girlfriend Ines de Ramon appeared in gossip magazines, arousing Anne’s suspicions, the scammers sent her a fake news story in which the AI-generated anchor talked about Pitt’s “exclusive relationship with a special individual.” he had .. the one named Anne.”

The video briefly comforted Anne, but when the real Brad Pitt and Ines de Ramon made their relationship official in June 2024, Anne decided to end things.

After the scammer tried to extract more money under the guise of “FBI Special Agent John Smith”, Anne contacted the police. An investigation is now underway.

The TF1 program said that the events had broken Anne, and that she had tried to end her life three times.

“Why did they choose me to hurt like this?” a tearful Anne said. “These people deserve hell. We need to find these cheaters though, help me find them.”

But in a YouTube interview on Tuesday, Anne hit out at TF1, saying she left out details about her repeated doubts about whether she was dating the real Brad Pitt, saying anyone could fall for the scam by saying “words you’ve never heard from your husband.” ».

Anne said she was now living with a friend: “My whole life is a little room with some boxes. That’s all I have left.”

While many netizens mocked Anne, many supported her.

“I understand the comedic effect, but we’re talking about a 50-year-old woman who was fooled by deepfakes and AI that your parents and grandparents wouldn’t be able to spot,” read one popular X post.

A commentary in the newspaper Libération said Anne was a “whistleblower”: “Today’s life is full of cyberbullies… and the advancement of AI will make this scenario worse.”