Tony Khan Becomes AI Hoax Victim As Fake Video Insulting Britt Baker Emerges (AEW News)
No, Tony Khan was not caught blasting Britt Baker on a call with TBS executives.
A video featuring "Tony Khan" openly criticising AEW star Britt Baker on a purported call with TBS executives has been debunked as an AI-generated hoax.
The video, which has been shared on various social media platforms (most notably Twitter), will not be embedded or linked here. It was presented as a conference call between AEW founder Khan and executives from TBS, the TV network broadcasting Dynamite every Wednesday. It was claimed that a TBS employee who'd been added to the call recorded a clip and circulated it.
In the fake snippet, the Khan imitator is highly critical of Baker, saying:
"Dude, between you and me, and this doesn't go anywhere but here, Britt Baker is a complete nightmare. Like, just the whiniest thing. You book her to go over, it's not good enough, she'll say the crowd doesn't like it. You book her to lose, she's p*ssed. She's done at this point, man. She's off to WWE."
To make the clip appear more salacious, the creator has written "Am I supposed to be on this call?" onscreen, accompanying the audio.
PWInsider's Mike Johnson has confirmed that this is "AI generated and absolutely not real."
The video was likely created with harmful intent, to capitalise on Baker's currently ambiguous AEW status. Last week, PWTorch reported that Baker was off television after becoming unpopular backstage, with one source commenting: "Nobody wants her back." Bryan Alvarez has since reported that the situation has been "blown way out of proportion." In any case, AEW has not used Baker on television since the 13 November episode of Dynamite.
Such things need to be debunked. Media literacy levels are such that thousands of people will have seen this video, fallen for it, and assumed that Khan had legitimately insulted Baker on a private call. Even still, a sizeable portion of those people will either miss Johnson's report or choose not to believe it.
As AI-generated content grows in prominence, so too will its believability. There will be more and more videos like this one - and more and more people will fall for them.