Someone Used AI To Turn A Car Creator’s Drag Strip Video Into A Different Woman, And It Should Be Banned

A car creator went looking at Instagram over the weekend and found her own video on someone else’s page, except the woman in it was no longer her. The creator behind graceautos_, a verified account with a big following in the UK car scene, says her clip was lifted, run through AI and reposted as a different woman. She put the two versions side by side, and her followers have been queuing up to agree that it is wrong.

Same Pose, Same Strip, Different Woman

The comparison is what makes the reel work. On one side is her original: jeans, a blue top and her hands clamped over her ears as a drag strip car launches behind her. On the other is the copy, with the same pose and the same background but a blonde woman in a grey dress, plus text over the video saying she had been invited to see one of the fastest cars in the world. The copy carries a small AI content tag under its caption. The two halves are labelled “AI fake” and “my original video”.

Her caption says the clip was taken from her page and turned into a different woman altogether. She says it angered her that someone was using her likeness and her content to make money, and that content can be taken without permission and appearances altered. She says she found it by chance and is sure there is plenty more out there.

The reel asks “what would you do if you were copied and altered?” and says her video, her movements and her job can be stolen by AI. The job is the part worth dwelling on. A creator’s income is a face, a personality and a library of clips, and a copy that borrows all three and hands them to a stranger is not a harmless prank.

What The Comments Said

The comment section was close to unanimous. Most readers called it awful, scary or deeply unsettling, and plenty said they were glad she had spoken up. One said it made them not want to be online any more. A few asked why there are no laws about it, and one pointed out that it could happen to anyone who posts in public.

The sharpest replies were about what the copy did to her message. One commenter called it copied and sexualised. The creator answered that she tries to set an example for girls and women to embrace themselves as they are, which made the swap exceptionally frustrating. When others asked about the law, she replied twice that it needs regulation.

A verified garage account said people do not yet grasp how much the world is about to change online. A commenter running an auto body account said he reported the page and was told it broke none of Instagram’s rules, so it stayed up.

Not everyone was on her side, though the dissent was mostly a shrug. One commenter said that once you upload something you no longer own it. Another said they no longer post anything they want to keep the rights to. One joker argued the AI version looked better and the real money was in building your own avatar. Two kind replies pointed out that she looks better than the robot clone.

Why Banning It Is Not An Overreaction

The case is simple. The copy takes a real person’s work, strips out the real person and puts the result in front of an audience that will never know. There is no consent, no credit and no payment. That deserves to be against the law, not left to a report button.

The law does not agree yet. The UK has no standalone personality right, so a person cannot simply order someone to stop using their likeness, and the routes that do exist were built for other problems. Criminal law has moved faster, but only on intimate images. Creating a sexual deepfake of an adult without consent became an offence on 6 February 2026, and the Crime and Policing Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April, targets suppliers of tools built to strip clothes from images of real people. A clothed clip like this one falls outside both, as far as published legal commentary shows.

The government accepts there is a gap. Its March report on copyright and AI said current law does not cover every digital replica made without consent, and that a new personality or digital replica right could be explored. Its formal response promised a consultation for summer 2026. The latest update available at the time of writing, from early September, said it had not been published.

Platforms are not filling the gap. Instagram began testing an optional AI creator label this spring, and creators can switch it off. A voluntary label does little against someone who wants a clone to pass as the real thing.

What To Do If It Happens To You

The UK Safer Internet Centre’s Report Harmful Content service, run by South West Grid for Learning, says most social media platforms have a process for reporting impersonation. Its first step is to report the account to the platform, and it links to reporting guides for Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook and LinkedIn.

It also advises telling your contacts that the fake is not you, so nobody falls for a scam run through it, and searching your own name now and then for accounts you do not recognise. Strong, unique passwords and two factor authentication are on its list too.

Copyright gives a second route. If you filmed or own the original footage, you can complain on that basis too, and Meta runs a separate intellectual property reporting form for it. None of this guarantees a takedown, which is the gap the government says it will look at.

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Motoring Chronicle has reached out to Grace via Instagram for a potential interview to discuss the impact this has had.