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Kate Garraway revealed she first laughed off the idea of her fake AI boyfriend when photos started appearing online.
But when the false rumours started impacting her grieving children, the Good Morning Britain presenter was left unimpressed.
On the anniversary of her late husband Derek Draper’s death, Kate was the subject of an AI hoax where she was pictured with a fake man.
Derek, who is the father of Kate’s two children Darcey, 19, and William, 16, passed away aged 56 after suffering Covid complications in January 2024.
Now, two years after Derek’s death, Kate has revealed how things went too far when the AI bots started to target her son in a fake article and claimed he was not happy with the ‘relationship’.
Speaking about the horrific encounter, Kate explained: ‘As I read on, something stopped me cold. A detail in the article claimed my son was not happy and was insisting the relationship end.
‘It said something like “The relationship looks set to flounder because Kate’s son isn’t happy and is insisting she ends it”.
‘As if Bill [William] hasn’t already had enough to cope with – navigating teenage life, exam pressure and the loss of his dad – he was suddenly being portrayed in a way that made him seem obstructive to his mum’s happiness, and selfish’.
Writing in her column for The Sun, Kate insisted William is the opposite to how he was described.
This week, Kate spoke of her fake boyfriend on GMB: ‘About a year ago, almost to the day of Derek passing, AI was even used to create a photo of me actually, with an unidentified man, which has prompted rumours of a new relationship.
‘It’s completely untrue, the picture is fabricated. I’ll tell you the impact of that in a moment.’
‘About a year ago, almost to the day of Derek passing away, quite a raw time for myself and the children, these things started happening on Facebook.
‘I don’t do Facebook, there a lots of fake Facebook Kate Garraway accounts, they were appearing almost as a celebration account for me.
‘I only became aware when people came up to me on the street, and said I’m so pleased you’ve found love.
‘Now, I didn’t react badly at that point. I thought it was sweet that they cared and they were going through grief themselves, and we had lovely conversations.’
Kate announced the death of her husband of 18 years on Instagram and said: ‘Rest gently and peacefully now Derek, my love, I was so lucky to have you in my life.’
The pair married in September 2005 after they started dating in 2004.
