Good Morning Britain presenter Kate Garraway has bravely detailed the profound and distressing impact of being targeted by a sophisticated AI hoax, which fabricated images of her with a supposed new boyfriend.
The On-Air Revelation
During Thursday's episode of the ITV morning show, Garraway, 58, and co-host Richard Madeley, 69, were discussing the case of internet personality Gareth Wyn Jones. Jones, also 58, was a victim of sextortion blackmail, where explicit fake images of him were created and used to demand £2,000. This conversation prompted Kate to share her own recent ordeal with digitally manipulated content.
"About a year ago, almost to the day of Derek passing, AI was even used to create a photo of me actually, with an unidentified man, which has prompted rumours of a new relationship," Kate revealed. She was quick to stress that the picture was completely fabricated and the relationship rumours were entirely untrue.
A Year of Distressing Fabrications
Garraway explained that the fake images began circulating on Facebook around the first anniversary of her husband Derek Draper's death on 3 January 2024, a time she described as "quite raw" for herself and their children, Darcey, 19, and Billy, 16. She first became aware when well-meaning members of the public approached her on the street to express happiness that she had "found love".
The situation escalated alarmingly when AI-powered bot sites, masquerading as legitimate news outlets, began publishing entirely false narratives. These fake stories claimed her son was destroying her fabricated new relationship due to selfishness and grief for his father. "I thought this is awful because his teachers could be reading this... and his friends might read it," a concerned Kate told viewers.
Even her close friends and colleagues, including GMB's Ranvir Singh, were initially fooled by the convincing nature of the hoax. "When you look at these, even Ranvir, your friends were fooled by it!" Kate confessed.
Speaking Out Against Fake News
Earlier in the week, Kate had addressed the issue on her Instagram, sarcastically commenting on the reveal of her "dreamy" new boyfriend in a newspaper and thanking the journalist for highlighting the problem. She wrote that while it was sweet people cared, the fake news was "very confusing and in some cases, hurtful for the kids".
This personal story of AI manipulation follows another behind-the-scenes drama Kate shared this week, where she revealed her front teeth caps fell out just before Monday's live broadcast after a collision with a taxi window, forcing her to use denture adhesive temporarily.
Kate's powerful account on Good Morning Britain underscores the very real human cost of AI-generated disinformation and the importance of trusted news sources. The show airs weekdays from 6am on ITV1 and ITVX.
