LeBron James threatens legal action over AI company making deepfakes showing him pregnant

The legal firm Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, P.C. Grubman, which represents LeBron James, reportedly sent a legal letter to Jason Stacks, the founder of the AI generator platform FlickUp, regarding one of its creators, Interlink AI. FlickUp has partnered with Interlink AI, a company that operates a Discord community, to create AI imagery. This imagery was used to assist individuals in the process of creating videos by providing detailed instructions and, in some instances, demonstrating how to create videos of James.

"A couple weeks ago, we received a cease and desist letter from LeBron James' attorney about one of our creators, Interlink AI. In collaboration with Interlink, we had been promoting an AI model trained on LeBron James and a few other iconic basketball players. Within 30 minutes of receiving the cease and desist, we made the decision to remove all realistic people from Interlink AI's software. Generative AI is the 'wild west' when it comes to copyright & IP, but we're committed to being on the right side of that change," Stacks told 404Media.

After receiving the letter, Stacks said his company took "immediate" action, which included removing the AI models and updating its "approach to likeness and public figure policies."

According to 404Media, high-profile creators involved in the AI Discord community were garnering millions of views on Instagram through its AI-generated videos of James and Steph Curry, another NBA star. "These included videos where an AI-generated James stood by as an AI-generated Diddy sexually assaulted Steph Curry in prison, videos of James imagined as a homeless person, videos of James on his knees with his tongue out, and videos of James pregnant," the outlet said.

Meta, which owns Instagram, reportedly removed three Instagram accounts that had garnered millions of views on nonconsensual AI videos of James. It's unclear if the Big Tech company received a cease-and-desist letter from the NBA player.

The moderators of the Interlink AI Discord community told its members in June that they had decided to remove all "realistic people models" from the Interlink AI platform.

"This change comes after we ran into legal issues involving a highly valued basketball player, and to avoid any further complications, we've chosen to take a proactive approach and fully remove all realistic likenesses from the site," the moderators wrote. "We know this may be disappointing for some of you who were enjoying the realism in your content, but this move protects the future of the platform and allows us to focus on building something even bigger."

Interlink Discord had a "wins" channel, where users boasted about creating prison rape videos that featured James, and it had also provided step-by-step instructions for creating videos of James.