An emotional Megan Thee Stallion told a court Thursday she feels “defeated” and struggles with mental health issues because of sexually explicit deepfake footage that a blogger has allegedly encouraged followers to watch.
The Grammy-winning artist took the witness stand in her civil lawsuit against blogger Milagro Gramz, who is accused of being a “mouthpiece,” “puppet” and “paid surrogate” for rapper Tory Lanez during and after his high-profile criminal trial.
Gramz is accused of encouraging her thousands of followers on X and Instagram to view an unauthorized, sexually explicit deepfake video of Megan that’d been circulating on social media.
“I feel like … to this day, I feel a little like defeated,” the artist testified, often sobbing while talking about the AI porn bearing her image. “Because no matter what, no matter if the video was fake or not … (Gramz) wanted it to be real.”
Lanez, whose real name is Daystar Peterson, was convicted of shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot after the pair left a Los Angeles party in 2020. He’s been sentenced to 10 years.
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Megan, whose real name is Megan Pete, accused the defendant in this civil trial of seeking to “denigrate, belittle, insult, and spread false statements about Ms. Pete on her online social media platforms, for no other reason than to bully, harass and punish Ms. Pete for Mr. Peterson’s conviction and to tarnish her reputation, causing emotional distress.”
The plaintiff said falsehoods allegedly being spread by the defendant are taking a toll.
“It’s really embarrassing to have to look at what the people don’t know,” Megan said. “See, in a position like that like I know it’s not me, but to be in front of everybody else and they have to watch it — it’s really embarrassing.”
Gramz, whose real name is Milagro Cooper, was also accused of sharing false misinformation about the criminal trial, including claims that the victim hadn’t really been shot and that she had a drinking problem.
The artist’s lawsuit does not accuse Gramz of creating or posting the video, but suggests she “willfully and maliciously promoted” it to her followers by pointing them to a post that had directly shared it.
Carlos Carie and Erika Angulo reported from Miami, David K. Li reported from New York City.
