Telling the difference between what’s real and what’s fake online is getting increasingly difficult, which became apparent to some people after a scary video depicting Penn Badgley went viral. At first, the video garnered tons of comments from people either praising the Gossip Girl actor or questioning why he was acting the way he was.
Even though the behavior he exhibited in the video seemed unusual, a lot of people didn’t immediately realize that the video was AI-generated, which has exacerbated concerns about the dangers of this technology and what it might be used for in the future.
Because, sure, not everyone thought the video was real. But it looked enough like Penn Badgley to be totally believable to a large number of people.
The video showed “Penn” supporting Spain in the World Cup.
Penn Badgley supporting Spain in the World Cup final pic.twitter.com/rqfuEQBEM5
— denny (@vicioushardy) July 19, 2026
The fake Penn sported a Spain soccer jersey and flexed his biceps on camera while sitting in a car. It was shared on X, where it now has 4.2 million views, but it was originally posted on TikTok. Some viewers clearly thought something was … off about the video. But instead of suspecting AI, many of them just acted like Penn was being weird.
“doesn’t he have a wife and kids at home?” one commenter wrote in response on X. “He is way too old to be posing like that,” someone else said.
Others could tell that the person in the video was not actually the actor, but they thought it was a Penn Badgley doppelgänger instead.
But no. In reality, the clip came from a TikTok account that shares fake, AI-generated Penn Badgley content (which seems scary for the actor as well).
The account that shared the video states that its content is AI-generated.
@joe.goldberg710 Are you supporting Argentina or Spain tomorrow? #spainworldcup #worldcup #argentina #football #foryou ♬ original sound – tazzyarchives
“IM NOT THE REAL @Penn Badgley MY VIDEOS ARE AI,” the account’s TikTok bio reads. The account is named after Joe Goldberg, Penn’s character in You. Even with that disclaimer, the account is still sharing content that is clearly meant to look like the actor.
And those who saw the video on X didn’t even see the TikTok user’s bio. A community note on X now informs people that the video is indeed AI-generated, but only after a seemingly significant number of people saw it and believed it to be real.
You could make the argument that there are several other signs that the video is AI-generated. Many people did make that argument. However, it clearly wasn’t obvious to everyone, even if some of the details seem odd.
“on just appearance, it is convincing, which is scary, but i noticed something was off immediately, because the mannerisms in the video are completely different from how he normally carries himself,” one X user wrote.
And another person added, “They really did get his facial expressions right, the only thing that makes me think it’s AI is that it doesn’t seem like something he would post, unless there was something ironic in the caption.”
The point, however, is that it’s getting less and less obvious.
All of yall falling for this ai video 😭😭 https://t.co/vsbrT94WPa
— Zeina (@_Zeinabou) July 20, 2026
“the fact that this is ai is horrifying like the fact that we genuinely cannot believe the s— we see with our own f—ing eyes is so scary,” one person wrote in response. And yeah, even if some people feel confident in their ability to discern whether something is real, AI-generated content still seems to be getting scarily realistic.
Plus, a lot of the time, when people are scrolling on social media, they’re not studying content intently or checking every creator’s profile for more information. Case in point: many of the people who saw the video didn’t notice the username attached to it, which some saw as a tell that the post was fake.
“people believing penn badgley’s tiktok user would be joe.goldberg710,” one person wrote on X, clearly in disbelief. But in the comments, several people argued that most people presumably didn’t even look at the username or pay attention to the details. “we rlly need to put the ai down i didn’t even notice the tag and thought it was real wtf……” someone commented.
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