Mia Goth's team has slammed Instagram over a viral AI-altered photo that surfaced amid her divorce from Shia LaBeouf. The picture landed at a moment when every move she made was already under a very large microscope. A cheeky slogan and a verified badge did the rest. Soon, the internet had a story, even if nobody had checked whether it was true. Fact-checking, as usual, arrived late to the party.

While the internet rushed to decode a slogan on a shirt, the real story sat quietly behind a blue checkmark.

Mia Goth did not post the selfie, and her team says so. The image showed a shirt reading “MY EX IS MY BIGGEST FAN.” It appeared on a verified account named @miagoth_. Two days after her divorce filing, several outlets ran it as real.

“This fan account meets Instagram’s criteria to qualify for a ‘blue check’ is disconcerting,” Christine Tripicchio, a representative for Goth, told The Verge.

She then added that it was “incomprehensible that Instagram evidently prioritizes the dissemination of forged and manipulated images,” criticizing the platform for allowing the AI-generated photo to spread.

Goth has no social media accounts at all, Tripicchio told The Verge, which makes a genuine post impossible. The fan account had roughly 1 million followers, and her team has filed multiple complaints over its repeated counterfeit AI images. Meta said it removed the account for impersonating a public figure. Meta does not ban AI depictions of real people, since it labels them instead, and the page appeared gone by Tuesday afternoon.

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As Meta removed the fake account, the real Goth kept collecting roles no slogan could fit on a shirt.

Mia Goth built her reputation as a modern scream queen in Ti West’s X trilogy, playing both Maxine Minx and Pearl between 2022 and 2024. She also wrote and produced Pearl, so clearly she knows her way around a script. Infinity Pool added body horror in 2023. Then came Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, where Goth played Elizabeth Harlander in a Netflix film that premiered at Venice and collected multiple Oscar nominations.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey arrived in July, with Goth playing the conniving handmaiden Melantho opposite Anne Hathaway’s Penelope. Star Wars: Starfighter is next, due around May 2027, with Goth as a main antagonist opposite Ryan Gosling. Fonda and Hey Bear are also lined up. Rumors link her to the role of Polaris in Marvel’s X-Men reboot, though nothing is official yet. The only thing AI added to her year was a headline she never asked for.

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What are your thoughts on Instagram letting a fake Mia Goth selfie fool headlines? Let us know in the comments.