Zürcher Nachrichten - He said, she said, AI said: Wall Street sex scandal rivets and confounds

The social media storm erupted soon after the suit -- packed with allegations of sexual abuse, coercion, and racial harassment -- was filed last month in a New York court by a former JPMorgan Chase banker identified by US media as 35‑year‑old Chirayu Rana.

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.

But even before any legal outcome, the suit's tawdry claims have become a source of public fascination, spawning a wave of AI-generated clips and sexually suggestive memes -- at a time when high-profile sexual harassment cases against women remain rare.

"This trend hints at how AI is going to increasingly pollute our feeds and pollute public discourse on both important and frivolous topics," Timothy Caulfield, a misinformation researcher from the University of Alberta in Canada, told AFP.

"This 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."

One hyper-realistic AI video circulating on Elon Musk's platform X purports to show the pair laughing and drinking wine at a restaurant, with a voiceover claiming "they are on a date."

The video also surfaced on other platforms, including Meta-owned Facebook, where some posts used it to baselessly claim that the lawsuit was "fake" and the two had been involved in a "consensual relationship."

- 'Real story fakes' -

Another AI clip circulating across platforms including Instagram -- dubbed by users as a "Fifty Shades of Gray"-style trailer -- presents a dramatized visual reconstruction of the alleged harassment, racial slurs and threats described in the suit.

And another AI video on X depicts the pair running together through a city engulfed in flames before the female executive shoves him aside in a dramatic scene.

Many social media users complained that the AI fabrications make it increasingly difficult to distinguish between reality and fiction on tech platforms, many of which have scaled back content moderation.

The viral posts reflect how some influencers seek to profit from a disinformation trend researchers call "real story fakes" -- flooding the internet with sensational AI fabrications about a real story gaining public attention.

"The trend of 'real story fakes' has been growing thanks to the proliferation of easy to use AI tools for image and video synthesis," Walter Scheirer of the University of Notre Dame told AFP.

In many cases, such content is created as a way to "make money off of an existing controversy" through engagement and platform monetization policies, he said.

- 'Internet trolls' -

"This form of disinformation is particularly prevalent in salacious circumstances such as the JP Morgan case, where those involved can be targeted for further humiliation through exaggerated depictions of their alleged sordid actions," Scheirer added.

The bank itself has also come under attack, with online posts sharing a doctored screenshot purporting to show a news site report that a JPMorgan intern was arrested for masturbating in a hotel hallway. The site reported no such arrest.

Even before allegations are tested in court, the AI-generated visuals have propelled Hajdini from a private citizen to an internet spectacle.

Fabricated images of her in a swimsuit are circulating online, while she has drawn comparisons to a character played by actress Demi Moore in the 1994 film Disclosure. In the film, Moore plays a female boss sexually harassing a male subordinate.

The case illustrates the power of AI technology to damage reputations and shape public opinion long before the facts have emerged.

"The JP Morgan case has drawn enormous interest because of the reversal of stereotypical gender roles, meaning many more people are seeking out information beyond what is coming from official channels," Scheirer said.

"Content farms and internet trolls are happy to oblige them."

O.Pereira--NZN