Media reported this week that Canadian actor Saint Von Colucci had died after repeated plastic surgery. TMZ now reports that it’s likely a hoax and it’s possible the actor in question simply never existed.
It was reported on Sunday that Von Colucci died in a hospital in South Korea where he was undergoing cosmetic surgery. It was the Daily Mail that first reported and quoted a person claiming to be the actor’s spokesperson. The person said that the actor underwent the procedure to try to look like star Jimin of popular boy group BTS, but the actor wanted to play Jimin in the upcoming Korean drama which is set to be called Pretty Lies. If the actor has had his jaw changed, his nose changed, his face redone, his lips trimmed, his eyebrows raised and his eyes raised.
However, according to TMZ, this will all be a lie. Von Colucci is not a real person.
iHeartRadio reports that the media denied the DailyMail report and the UK media responded by deleting his story, without giving any explanation. Journalist Raphael Rashid also drew attention to the issue on Twitter, saying we are now in the age of AI-powered news. This is really what is happening and the consequences are serious, especially for people in the media. If anyone can now invent compelling news and images, how can people trust anything they read on the internet.
“How can you separate truth from fiction, especially when the man-made material has become so compelling.”
Readers don’t have the time or energy to check that everything they read stands up to scrutiny. Therefore, they must trust journalists and the media to take on this task. Journalists should therefore be careful to confirm the information they receive, refute fake news, be careful with accuracy, and take responsibility. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary. Journalists already face all kinds of challenges, including heightened suspicion, pressure from governments and censorship. The news produced by artificial intelligence adds to this complexity. In this case, the before and after photos of the alleged actor have sparked the interest of journalists as this news is likely to be popular. The media fell for it because they wanted to believe it was true. The idea that a stranger failed a lot of cosmetic surgery to look like his role model, but then died was a story that might appeal to readers. It would have been a story that could have generated clicks.
I don’t know how the story took off. Maybe there was someone on the go looking for attention or manipulating the media. It may be an attempt to spread fake news. We must therefore be attentive to the facts and the truth, otherwise anyone is given the power to manipulate public opinion in a few clicks.
14/ Otherwise, we risk living in a world where truth and reality are blurred, and anyone can shape the narrative and manipulate public opinion with just a few clicks.
Or are we already doing it?
— Raphael Rashid (@koryodynasty) April 26, 2023
Fokus certainly fell into this trap and dealt with the young actor and his death, which is disturbing. We apologize to readers and will be careful how we work in the future. Mistakes are made to be learned, even if they are sometimes painful.
In this thread, Rashid pursues the matter in detail. He checked with the agency that allegedly represented Von Colucci. Then he found himself on an unconvincing website that referenced a phone number. No one answered when called, but the reporter received an angry message following where he was asked what he wanted. Which no agency would probably do. Moreover, there is almost nothing to find about the actor on the Internet. It is mentioned in several places, but always vaguely and all the photos are rather blurry. When he put an image into a program that analyzes whether the images are real or from artificial intelligence, the answer was maybe. Rashid found the Instagram believed to belong to the actor and it shows that its user was active after the actor’s supposed death and dealing with text descriptions along with images. The hospital where he was supposed to have died doesn’t exist either. After the reporter began digging into the matter, an Instagram account believed to belong to the actor as well as the alleged agency’s account were closed to the public. The biggest clue was when the DailyMail wrote its story.
1/ I might be going to hell if that’s true, but take the news of Canadian singer “Saint Von Colucci” dying after surgery in Korea to look like Jimin with a pinch of salt. There is no evidence that any of this is true. For starters, the photo included in Daily Mail can be generated by AI. pic.twitter.com/s3WSFIDbih
— Raphael Rashid (@koryodynasty) April 25, 2023
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