TV meteorologist shaken after sultry video of 'herself' makes rounds on the internet in chilling new craze

Daily Mail​

02-05-2025

A beloved former Nashville meteorologist is speaking out after discovering lifelike deepfake pornographic videos of herself online - a chilling violation that left her shaken and humiliated.
'I cry myself to sleep most nights... mostly because I don't want my kids to see me,' Bree Smith, 43, said in an emotional interview with CBS News.
The mother and former NewsChannel 5 weather anchor found her face digitally pasted onto another woman's body in explicit content, with AI-generated audio perfectly mimicking her voice.
The disturbing videos are part of a fast-growing trend of digital impersonation fueled by artificial intelligence. The content, shared through fake social media accounts, has been used in sextortion schemes targeting Smith's fans.
Smith's nightmare began with a simple email.
'I got an email from someone saying "Bree, I think you should know that there is an impersonator," she recalled.
What she discovered next was worse than she imagined - dozens of convincing fake accounts using her image and AI-altered voice to scam unsuspecting followers.
In one AI-generated video, Smith appears to speak directly to the viewer in what looks like a newsroom, saying, 'Yes dear, it is me, it is really me.'
The video is completely fake - but eerily real in sound, tone and expression. Watching it back, Smith said: 'I mean you're basically taking someone's identity and you're weaponizing them.'
'These imposters are trying to take my story, and my story is mine,' she said. 'This is my life. I'm 43 years old and I have worked hard and I have loved well, and I'm not going to just roll over and take this.'
In one case, she said a viewer received a few fake videos in which it appeared Smith 'promised many sexual acts and asked the viewer to send them money to book a two-night stay at the Conrad Hotel.'
By doing so, those social media users 'violated me and they preyed on Tennesseans,' Smith said.
When she then reached out to WTVF, where she formerly worked, she claims she was 'told that nothing could be done - it was not illegal and I had no recourse.'
'I felt humiliated and scared,' Smith recounted. 'I didn't know what to do or how to fight it and I didn't know how to protect the viewers and the people that trusted me online from being subject to this kind of extortion.'
WTVF station manager Richard Eller has since told the Tennessean the station 'wholeheartedly' shares her frustrations as he explained how staff tried to stop the imposters.
'We did everything in our power to help her, seeking expert advice to make sure we were doing all we could,' he said.
'We exhausted our options with the social media platforms to try to get them to take action, reported the situation to Metro Police and launched an investigation through our corporate security team. Nothing worked.'
The whole situation wound up being 'very degrading' for Smith, who said it caused her to face a 'very dark depression.
'Having my face, my reputation and my identity distorted into something so vile and vulnerable traumatized me and my family,' Smith told lawmakers.
'This has devastated my life's work,' she added, saying she became a meteorologist 'because I believed that I could help people.
'I believed that when severe weather was happening, I could save people's lives,' Smith explained.
'So to then have my face, my reputation, the trust this community put in me now being weaponized, to hurt the very people I spent my career trying to protect? I mean it essentially, it stole what I worked so hard to create and put me in an impossible place where now I was the threat to the people I spent my career protecting.'
Since leaving her role at the news station, Smith has taken it upon herself to fight back.
She's begun tracking the impersonators, compiling a spreadsheet of the fraudulent accounts using her image.
'This is a Google Sheet, only a week old, and in a week there are 24 [different accounts]. And I don't catch all of them,' she explained.
Her experience reflects a broader, deeply alarming trend. According to the FBI, more than 50,000 Americans were targeted by sextortion schemes in the past year, with the most common victims being teenage boys.
But experts say adults, especially public figures, are increasingly in the crosshairs.
'These offenders, their whole game is to make money,' Hayley Elizondo, who investigates sextortion crimes at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said.
'I'm not surprised that we are seeing adults also become the target of financial sextortion. Frankly, they're going to reach out to those who can pay them.'
For Smith, the trauma is still raw - but so is her resolve.
She's now working with lawmakers and advocacy groups to protect others from suffering the same fate. 'I'm not going to be silent,' she said.
Last month, the Tennessee legislature has passed the Preventing Deepfake Images Act following emotional testimony from the Nashville-based meteorologist.
The bill, HB 1299/SB 1346, passed in the Senate on April 15 and passed in the House on Monday, April 21.
The legislation now creates civil and criminal actions for individuals who are the subject of an intimate digital depiction that is disclosed without the person's consent.
Smith testified at the Tennessee House Criminal Justice Subcommittee and shared her experience of finding her face edited onto other people's semi-nude bodies.
'We don't get to choose the traumatic things that happen in our lives, but we do get to choose what we do with it,' Smith said.