Emily Blunt AI image incident — Oct 2026

A report by Decrypt Ads has uncovered a network of over 2,100 websites masquerading as legitimate cooking blogs to generate ad revenue. These sites utilize automated pipelines to publish AI-generated recipes, often scraping content from real creators while employing deceptive tactics to attract traffic from search engines and social media platforms.

What happened

Researchers identified a coordinated effort to flood the internet with AI-generated content, often referred to as slop. One prominent example is a site called AddCakes, which features a fictional baker named Elena. The site presents Elena as a busy mother and expert baker, but the imagery used to represent her is an AI-generated likeness of actress Emily Blunt. The site even features fabricated photos of the character in a kitchen and with a fake family to build credibility.

According to researcher Zach Edwards, these operations are highly aggressive on platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook. The sites often claim their recipes are tested and vetted by experts, despite being produced through automated systems that likely never test the recipes. Technical analysis suggests these operations are linked to adtech partners in Russia and China. Beyond the deception of the content itself, these sites pose a significant privacy risk; visitors who do not block advertisements may have their browsing data harvested by entities in authoritarian countries. The report highlights that these operators intentionally hide their ownership and use fake backstories to create a false sense of authority, ultimately prioritizing ad revenue over the safety and experience of their audience.