A comedian discovers her joke stolen

Stand-up comic Julia Jasunas learned that an Instagram influencer named Aylen Skye had copied her joke verbatim, down to the ums and ahs, in a viral video.

The influencer is not real

Aylen Skye, with two hundred fifty thousand Instagram followers, appeared to be AI-generated. Her website redirected to Fanvue, a subscription platform marketing itself as the number one AI monetisation platform for creators.

How Jasunas knew it was fake

Unlike real female comedians whose comments sections fill with men objectifying them, Skye's comments were entirely positive. That certainty convinced Jasunas the account was artificial.

“That's how I knew she was fake”

Jasunas reports the theft to Meta

Jasunas reported the video to Meta for impersonation, but Meta said it did not violate community guidelines because Skye was not pretending to be Jasunas, only passing off her joke as its own.

“They just didn't seem to care”

Multiple comedians targeted

WIRED identified eight comics whose videos have been replicated by scantily clad AI-generated women. The AI versions often perform better than originals, with superior lighting, sound and production values.

Instagram's policy gap

Instagram prohibits impersonation but has no rules against copying content or posting AI material, provided it is labeled. Some accounts label their videos as AI, others do not or label inconsistently.

Tiffany Sloane emerges

Another AI account, Tiffany Sloane, identifies as an actress and has amassed more than three hundred seventy five thousand Instagram followers since starting in August, plus presence on TikTok and Facebook.

George Brett Olson's stolen joke

Comedian George Brett Olson posted a viral video on October three showing Tiffany Sloane's near-identical version of his joke about Republicans ignoring AI risks, wearing matching salmon shirts and khaki shorts.

“I just thought it was so weird to see people openly stealing in real time”

Meta again refuses to act

Olson's followers reported Sloane to Meta, which responded that the video did not violate community guidelines. Olson called this unbelievable, saying Sloane had stolen both his intellectual property and his likeness.

“This is my intellectual property. I created it.”

Jokes have weak legal protection

Stand-up jokes have historically enjoyed very little copyright protection due to the ephemeral nature of stand-up and because many setups and punch lines have been used with variations for years.

Litigation is not practical

Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at the University of Michigan, noted that accusations of infringement involving low-dollar-value creative work rarely result in litigation. Olson's lawyer said suing was probably not worth the trouble.

Tech industry celebrates the accounts

Andreessen Horowitz partner Justine Moore publicly praised Tiffany Sloane in an X post, referring to her online presence as a genius marketing hack rather than problematic content theft.

“a genius marketing hack”

Comedians ask if the artist matters

Olson expressed despair that three hundred fifty thousand followers of Tiffany Sloane do not care whether she is real or who actually created the jokes. He asked the essential question: does the artist matter?

“does the artist matter? And to those 350,000 people that follow Tiffany Sloane, the answer is clearly no.”