Singaporean woman exposes years-long harassment involving explicit AI-generated deepfake videos
The victim, identified as Renae Cheng, said in an Instagram video posted on April 16 that she has been repeatedly targeted since 2024 by an individual she identified as Faiza Khan, a student at Bradford College.
NATASYA AZHARI
SHAH ALAM – A Singaporean woman has alleged she has been subjected to a prolonged online harassment campaign spanning more than two years, involving repeated threats, impersonation and abusive messages across multiple platforms.
The victim, identified as Renae Cheng, said in an Instagram video posted on April 16 that she has been repeatedly targeted since 2024 by an individual she identified as Faiza Khan, a student at Bradford College.
Cheng claimed the harassment extended beyond abusive messages to the creation of sexually explicit AI-generated videos that falsely depicted her in intimate situations with a man who was not her husband.
Cheng said that the individual created multiple accounts across Instagram, TikTok and email to continue sending abusive messages and threats despite repeated attempts to block and report them.
“Since 2024, she has made multiple accounts to harass me on Instagram, TikTok and even Gmail, sending me long and hateful messages, threatening to harm me,” she said.
She added that the harassment also extended to her family, including derogatory remarks directed at her newborn child.
“She comments hate on my husband and she even calls my newborn baby a djinn which I've been told means demon,” she said.
Cheng said the situation began after she shared content online about her struggle with eczema, which she said unintentionally drew attention from the individual.
The situation later escalated when the alleged harasser began creating manipulated AI content involving Cheng and a Singaporean business owner, identified as Reuben, with whom she had previously collaborated on an eczema-care product review.
Cheng said the individual had initially contacted her in August 2024, requesting Reuben’s contact details, before the interaction spiralled into persistent harassment.
The use of AI-generated deepfake content marked a turning point in the case, with Cheng alleging that the videos were repeatedly circulated and reposted even after she reported them to platform administrators.
In a follow-up video posted on May 9, Cheng said the harassment further escalated to include claims of hacking and threats to distribute her personal content on the dark web.
She said these claims were later found to be baseless, involving screenshots and recordings from third-party websites that falsely claimed to provide hacking capabilities.
Cheng described such platforms as fraudulent and designed to mislead users, adding that there was no evidence of any actual breach of her accounts.
Despite multiple accounts being taken down following reports, she said the harassment persisted through newly created profiles, allowing the cycle of abuse to continue.
The case has since raised broader concerns about the misuse of artificial intelligence in generating non-consensual explicit content, as well as the challenges victims face in stopping sustained online harassment across multiple digital platforms.
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