Julie Tuzet, a French model and songwriter, has responded after a viral TikTok video appeared to claim that she was the daughter of Astronomer CEO Andy Byron.
“I am not the CEO’s daughter,” she said in a video.
Why It Matters
Byron and Kristin Cabot, Astronomer’s head of human resources, were seen on a jumbotron embracing at a Coldplay concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts, last week. Footage of the incident, which showed the couple breaking apart in a panic, was later uploaded to TikTok, where it became a viral sensation.
Byron, who is married to Megan Kerrigan Byron, has resigned from his CEO position amid the fallout. His embrace of Cabot has been widely parodied on- and offline. The moment has also renewed a national discussion about privacy in the digital age.
TikTok/Screenshot/5./15 West
What To Know
A video that has circulated widely across social media shows a young woman standing by a firepit, with a text overlay saying, “Reconnecting with life after your dads affair makes national news.”
While the video does not explicitly name Byron, given the intense virality of the jumbotron footage and subsequent fallout, he appears to be the “dad” referenced in the video.
Though the video features Tuzet, she has no connection to Byron.
In a video posted on TikTok, the model said: “You probably have seen this video of me at a fireplace ‘reconnecting’ with nature. It’s just someone who stole my videos and my content from TikTok to create this fake news. And it’s going viral.”
Speaking with Newsweek by email, Tuzet said, “This is unfortunately not the first time my content is being stolen, and I’d truly appreciate this to be the last time.”
“I woke up the other day with 100 messages of my friends and family sending me this viral video of myself taken originally in Guatape, Colombia, three months ago,” she said.
“It is me in the video, but the text is not mine, and the account is not mine neither,” the songwriter continued.
Her TikTok video calling out the stolen content has been viewed more than 197,000 times as of reporting.
It’s not the only video she has posted about the situation. In another post, she shared a clip of herself in front of the firepit with a text overlay that said, “Reconnecting with nature after getting impersonated on TikTok by some troll using my videos for clout once again.”
That video has been viewed more than 162,000 times.
Following the viral jumbotron moment, “Andy Byron” quickly jumped to the top of Google‘s trending searches. Social media users have closely followed the incident, which has all the ingredients to make a modern scandal.
What People Are Saying
Julie Tuzet told Newsweek by email: “My face has been all over the news in the past days as ‘The CEO’s daughter’ … I am a French model and singer-songwriter from Paris that just had her identity stolen.”
What Happens Next
Online misinformation has long been a concern, but in the age of AI, fake news is rapidly increasing.