Beauty influencer Tatiana Elizabeth called out Lauren Blake Boultier, another influencer who happens to be white, for superimposing her face over her original photo. Elizabeth showed the original post and compared it to Boultier’s, which was nearly identical except for her face. Here’s what happened.
Tatiana Elizabeth called out Lauren Blake Boultier for stealing her content
Elizabeth took to social media to call out Boultier for stealing her content and passing it as her own. On March 30, Elizabeth showed the original photo in which she posed at the 2024 U.S. Open. She is seen wearing a white tennis skirt, a white short-sleeved cropped t-shirt, a striped cardigan and green Louis Vuitton shoulder bag.
Last month, Boultier posted a nearly identical photograph — the only noticeable difference being her face. She also indicated Miami as a location, in reference to the Miami Open hosted in March.
“Bar for bar. The weirdest part about this is that it’s not even an AI influencer. This is a real person who used AI to put her head on my body. She geotagged MIAMI as if she’s at the Miami Open. When my photo was taken at the US open two years ago,” Elizabeth wrote on Threads.
Elizabeth also took to her Instagram Stories to share what she saw as a theft of her original content.
“Well this is….. peculiar…I was here too!!” she wrote, according to People. “In this same exact outfit and the same watch, same bag, picture was taken at the same angle even..omg we even have the same tattoo!!!!!!?”
“Pretending to be somewhere you weren’t, in something you’ve never worn, as someone you’re not… for social media. It’s a little scary,” Elizabeth added.
On TikTok, Elizabeth added that she was looking for an explanation and did not want to trigger bullying toward Boultier.
“Tatiana hopes this situation raises awareness about how AI can blur reality, which can be unsettling. As of now she has not been in contact with the other party,” a representative for Elizabeth told People.
Lauren Blake Boultier apologized for the incident and admitted to using AI
After Elizabeth called her out, Boultier reportedly contacted her in order to apologize. She explained that her team used an AI tool, which generated the photo. Boultier added that she hadn’t seen the original photo. She then followed up with public apologies posted on social media and communicated to the press.
“That shouldn’t have happened, and I take full responsibility,” Boultier told TMZ. “This came from an A.I. content system my team uses to generate images at scale. I did not see the original image or intentionally set out to copy anyone’s work, but that doesn’t change the outcome.”
“I understand this impacted another creator, especially when it comes to respecting original work, and I never want to contribute to that kind of frustration or harm within the creative community that I have been a part of for 10 years,” she added.
Tatiana Elizabeth said the issue is not new to her as a Black content creator
The influencer reflected on the difficulties she encounters in content creation by being a Black woman. After a decade in this field, her hard work materialized into an invitation to the U.S. Open by Serena Williams.
“This is not new to me,” Elizabeth said on TikTok, according to The Grio. “I think that it’s completely and utterly disrespectful to take the work from someone else who has a smaller following than you and act like they don’t exist. Minimize their work, minimize their experience.”
“You are on the internet trying to seem like you are doing something and being somewhere that you are not, when you know that you have people looking up to you,” she added. “I think that that is so disrespectful to everyone that’s following you, to not be transparent about these things.”
Elizabeth also reminded her audience to be careful about comparisons with influencers and social media.
“This is just a lesson for all of us to not believe everything that we see on the internet,” she said, per The Grio. “Do not create insecurities within yourself based on things that you see online, because some people are living a very, very fake life.”
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