GMB's Kate Garraway fumes over 'hurtful' boyfriend hoax
The 58-year-old broadcaster revealed she has been the victim of a cruel hoax for more than a year.
Good Morning Britain presenter Kate Garraway opened up about the impact of a hurtful” AI hoax, which has started circulating lies about her and her family online. On Thursday (January 15), the 58-year-old broadcaster – who lost her husband Derek Draper following a lengthy battle with Covid-19 in 2024 – talked about the false stories making the rounds on social media. As she fronted the morning show with her co-host Richard Madeley on GMB, she revealed that internet personality Gareth Wyn Jones was the victim of a sextortion blackmail.
It was at this point that she shared her own experience with online rumours. She recalled: “About a year ago, almost to the day of Derek passing, AI was even used to create a photo of me, actually, with an unidentified man, which has prompted rumours of a new relationship.”
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The mum-of-two added: “It’s completely untrue, the picture is fabricated. I’ll tell you the impact of that in a moment. I don’t do Facebook; there are lots of fake Facebook Kate Garraway accounts, and they were appearing almost as a celebration account for me.
“I only became aware when people came up to me on the street and said, ‘I’m so pleased you’ve found love’. Now, I didn’t react badly at that point. I thought it was sweet that they cared and they were going through grief themselves, and we had lovely conversations.”
She went on: “The turning point was towards the end of last year when these AI bot sites, pretending to be news sites, were doing whole things about how my son was destroying the relationship because of his selfishness, missing his dad, and I thought this is awful because his teachers could be reading this.
“Trusting this news source, another reason to have a trusted source like Good Morning Britain... And his friends might read it. Typical parent, you take it yourself, but don’t like it when it’s your kid.”
Kate went on to detail how even her co-star Ranvir Singh’s friends had been “fooled” by the fake story. Richard Madeley asked: “You didn’t know whether to mention anything?” as Ranvir added: “Well, I thought Kate would have told me. It was confusing me” to which Kate chuckled: “It’s been going on for a year now.”
It comes after Kate addressed the rumours on social media earlier this week. Sharing pictures on her Instagram Story, she penned: “Very excited to see my ‘new boyfriend’ revealed in @thesun today – isn't he #dreamy?!!
"Seriously though, thank you @clemmiemoodie for highlighting this, for months now people (even those who know me really well) have been asking me stuff out there that is totally fake.”
She added: “On one level, it’s really sweet that people care about my life, but very confusing and in some cases, hurtful for the kids when it’s #fakenews.”
Mr Draper passed away back in January 2024 after an agonising medical battle following complications from Covid, which he caught in March 2020. The couple shares two children, Darcy, 19, and Billy, 16.
