AI Floods Football With Deepfake Images

AI-generated images and videos are proliferating across social media, placing football players and clubs at the center of a rising deepfake problem and blurring what is real. Incidents include fabricated photos of Antoine Semenyo, Marc Guehi and manipulated clips of Michael Carrick; the UK’s Data (Use and Access) Act came into force last month criminalizing sexual deepfakes, and the government consulted on a 'personality right' in December 2024, leaving clubs to rely on platform takedowns.