An influencer named Justine has stirred controversy by using AI to mimic Morgan Freeman’s voice, convincing some of her 218,700 TikTok followers that she was his “nepo niece.” The ruse involved daily vlogs narrated with the AI-generated voice of the 87-year-old actor, leading some social media users to believe Freeman was personally supporting her content.
Justine’s tongue-in-cheek TikTok videos, where she used AI to mimic Freeman’s voice and jokingly called him “Uncle Mo,” were intended as a clout-seeking stunt. However, some social media users mistakenly believed her claim to be his niece, according to Daily Mail.
The confusion originated on X (formerly Twitter) when user @JahelisWasHer, seemingly unaware of the context and AI usage in Justine’s posts, took her claim of being Freeman’s niece seriously.
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Tweeting about Justine, they wrote: “Her uncle is Morgan Freeman and she gets him to narrate her day in the life vlogs. She wins at life and content creating. This is such a flex.”
The tweet by @JahelisWasHer went viral on X (formerly Twitter), garnering over 16.4 million views and 214,000 likes as of June 27. The tweet shared a TikTok video of Justine documenting a trip to South Africa, with a voiceover mimicking Freeman narrating “a day in the life as a nepo niece.”
“Being a nepo niece has its perks, apparently. Because why did she use money I gave her to go to South Africa?
“Being in South Africa, surely she’s getting ready for something cultural. Nope,” the voiceover sardonically continued over clips of Justine shopping and partying with her friends.
Many X users quickly believed the viral tweet claiming Justine was Freeman’s niece without investigating her content, which provides strategy advice for aspiring influencers, or verifying Freeman’s actual relatives.
“I LOVE this,” one responded.
“Oh she definitely won,” wrote a second.
“Oh to be a nepo baby,” a third sighed, adding a frustrated-face emoji.
However, many users quickly recognized and called out the fake Freeman narration as clearly AI-generated.
“Morgan Freeman made from scratch with AI,” one flagged.
“I see why GOD said: Many will be deceived… It’s starting to take shape with AI,” a second lamented.
“Just me or is it not extremely bizarre to use an actor’s AI voice to make content claiming you as blood family and using their AI voice to narrate made up stories about how they’re related to you…
“Like I get it’s supposed to be ‘obvious’ that this is trolling, lol but like…??” floated a third.
Another shared a screengrab of reader-generated fact-checking, confirming the voice was “created with an AI Voice Generator.”
Following all of the callouts, @JahelisWasHere fessed up to her mistake: “Welp I’ve been informed this is actually AI.
“SORRY for believing that Morgan Freeman was a very sweet uncle.”
In reality, Freeman, renowned for his deep, calming voice, has three older siblings. It remains unclear how many nieces and nephews he has, whether through them or his two ex-wives’ siblings.
