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Several college football fans have gone viral in the stands this year.
Sara Smith, an Ole Miss Rebels fan, is one of them. She went viral during an ESPN broadcast earlier this season.
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Smith is very much a real person and a big-time college football fan. She’s since been identified on social media, with real pages and actual followers.
But others are getting in on the trend – and these images are not real, by all accounts.
A “fan” at the Texas Tech vs. Houston game earlier this year went viral in the stands, generating millions of views – around 10 million views or more, probably – on social media. However, it’s very obvious that this image is most certainly AI-generated.
The fan on the left at the Texas Tech vs. Houston game is not real, while the fan on the right is. The photo on the left was most likely AI-generated, while the photo on the right is an actual screengrab from ESPN’s broadcast.
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The above tweet has more than 38,000 likes and 9.6 million views.
It’s a growing reminder to always be skeptical with what you see on social media these days.
AI photos and videos are getting harder and harder to detect
As the technology surrounding AI continues to improve, and more and more videos and photos go viral on social media, it’s going to be more and more difficult to tell what’s real and what’s fake.
That’s why, for the most part, you should always be skeptical of what you see on social media. If it’s not coming from an account that you’re familiar with, and it seems too good – or too crazy – to be true, then it probably is.
These AI-generated photos and videos are meant to capture your attention and generate engagement – and they do that most of the time – but way too many people are falling for them, thinking that they are real, when they are most certainly not.
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Fans can improve in how they get this information.
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This story was originally published October 11, 2026 at 11:10 AM.