AI Trace
Creative GenerationConsumer Facing

Reviewed and published by trentmaziarz, April 8, 2026. Discovered and drafted by our automated research pipeline.

MEDVi's website and ads showed before-and-after weight-loss photos that were deepfakes: real transformation photos taken from Reddit and other public websites, with the faces AI-swapped to present them as MEDVi patient success stories. The New York Times confirmed this practice in its April 2026 profile of the company.

Details

A 2025 investigation traced specific "patient" images to their original sources. One supposed MEDVi patient, "Michael P.," who allegedly lost 48 pounds using MEDVi's medications, was actually a Reddit user whose 2016–2017 posts documented a sobriety journey — years before semaglutide weight-loss drugs existed. Another image was traced to a 2021 Newsweek article, with the face replaced using an AI deepfake tool. As of March 2026, a MEDVi subdomain was displaying a new set of before-and-after photos under the same patient names but with entirely different faces — again showing AI artifacts including malformed hands and missing fingernails. MEDVi's own website now contains a disclaimer acknowledging AI-generated content, though this disclaimer did not appear at the time the original images were first documented.

Products affected

Compounded semaglutidecompounded tirzepatide

Sources & Evidence

Cite this record

Trace Foundation. (2026). MEDVi: MEDVi's website and ads showed before-and-after weight-loss photos that were deepfakes: real transformation photos taken from Reddit and other public websites, with the faces AI-swapped to present them as MEDVi patient success stories. The New York Times confirmed this practice in its April 2026 profile of the company (data as of 2026-04-08) [Data set record]. AI Trace. https://www.aitrace.org/r/practice/35f62a28-20b5-4b80-95f9-1f15a4b5dd25. Accessed October 14, 2026.

Stable link
https://www.aitrace.org/r/practice/35f62a28-20b5-4b80-95f9-1f15a4b5dd25
Data as of
April 8, 2026
Last verified
August 4, 2026

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