Last week, stand-up comedian Julia Jasnath was scrolling through Instagram when she received a direct message from a fellow comic. The friend asked whether Jasnath knew that an Instagram influencer had allegedly ripped off a joke from her stand-up act.

Jasnath was initially furious, although she was not particularly surprised. Plagiarism is not uncommon in stand-up comedy, and the comedy community is “very sensitive to plagiarism because there aren’t a lot of protections against it,” she told WIRED. “So we all care about each other.” Then she clicked the link.

An AI-generated comedian appears to copy a stand-up joke

The video presented its subject as a stand-up comedian. Airen Sky appeared as a buxom blonde with leonine cheekbones and 250,000 Instagram followers. In the clip, Sky wears a crop top and Daisy Dukes while joking about renting a room in her two-bedroom apartment to a cute man.

To Jasnath’s shock, the routine was literally her joke, including the “eh” and “ah.”

The account promoted AylenTV.com, a website that redirected to NSFW content from Fanvue, a subscription-based OnlyFans competitor that describes itself as the “No. 1 AI monetization platform for creators.” Sky did not appear to be a cartoon, but after examining the account’s comments, Jasnath became convinced that the character was not real and had been generated with artificial intelligence.

“That’s how I knew she was fake”

“If you look in the comments section of any female comic, you’ll see men criticizing her, objectifying her body, saying she’s not funny or that her jokes are bad,” Jasnath said. Sky’s comments, by contrast, were uniformly positive. “That’s how I knew she was fake,” she said, deadpan.

For Jasnath, discovering that a sexy AI-generated comedian had used her material was “a violation on so many different levels.”

“It’s another thing to have your jokes stolen,” she said. “It’s another thing to put your work into something so sexual for someone else’s benefit.”

Jasnath immediately reported the video to Meta as a spoof. Meta told her that Sky was not pretending to be someone else and therefore had not violated its community guidelines. “They didn’t seem to care at all,” Jasnath said.

Get used to it, Jasnath. Sky’s account is not currently labeled as AI-generated, although most of its posts are flagged as AI content.

More comedians targeted by AI-generated accounts

Jasnath is not the only stand-up comedian whose material was allegedly copied by Sky. WIRED identified eight comics whose videos were replicated by AI-generated women in revealing clothing. Many of the accounts follow one another on social media.

The videos copy stand-up clips that have already performed well online, then present them to a larger audience with better lighting, clearer sound and more form-fitting clothing—in other words, many of the ingredients associated with viral content.

The accounts also publish frivolous, visibly AI-generated late-night television segments that interview hosts such as Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel. Some posts also feature “edgy” racist or transphobic jokes aimed at a MAGA audience.

Instagram policies leave gaps around copied content

Instagram’s Community Guidelines prohibit impersonation, but those policies do not necessarily apply to copying another person’s content—particularly when that content is not protected by copyright. The platform also does not prohibit AI-generated content as long as it is properly labeled.

In practice, some accounts are labeled as AI-generated while others are not, and the videos are labeled inconsistently.

Sky did not respond to a request for comment. However, the account has criticized videos from several stand-up comedians, writing, “If only you had focused on putting out the content instead of complaining.” One comic’s Instagram post also read: “With posts like this, you will be as successful as me.”