Erling Haaland is everywhere at the World Cup. Most of them are artificial intelligence

Last week, somewhere middle World Cup Madness, a now-viral video of Norwegian striker Erling Haaland glancing at his face in a restaurant, looking to the left and wincing at his reflection. One post on X The video post received more than 31 million views in just a few days. But here’s the thing: it’s not him.

Fact-checkers traced the footage to a skit by Chinese comedian Jin Long, It was posted on TikTok in mid-June. The corrections were duly noted, yet the clip continued to spread anyway. By the fourth week of World Cup 2026The Internet has already decided who Erling Haaland is. AI or not, in the video, Haaland was the character.

If the old model of stardom was a white-knuckled fist over your own image, the new model, as evidenced by Haaland’s recent internet fame, is of being a character so colorful, so relentlessly meme-able, that artificial intelligence can do something for you. Thus, the celebrity becomes more like an open-source character, only loosely associated with the human who owns the face.

And Zev Haaland did not appear out of nowhere. He comes from China, where the striker has already become something of a sensation. He’s spent the last few months In front of a commercial For a Chinese herbal drink, he bravely tries to use Mandarin, It is turned into a song He is re-baptized Habao (roughly “Ha Baby”) by fans who delight in the gap between the destroyer on the field and the golden retriever off the field. As his popularity exploded in China, Haaland was officially fired Duane and Weibo Accounts, quickly amassed millions of followers. The reversal clip was an artifact of an entire cottage industry of memes and edits made by AI Haaland, all revolving around the same joke.

So, what really happens when deepfakes turn into fan art?

This is increasingly how online sports fandom works. Athletes are no longer paid attention to just through highlights or post-match interviews, but as well-developed characters with recognizable quirks and stories.

They’re also now getting the full fandom treatment previously reserved for fictional characters, in lore, canon, character arcs, and adaptations. A Latest report AI-powered sports content company WSC Sports found that Generation Z in particular feels more connected to individual athletes than to teams, and reconnaissance Consulting firm Oliver Wyman found that social media content from athletes is the single biggest driver of Gen Z sports engagement.

So once a footballer becomes a character, fans stop being mere spectators and can instead have a say in the content. “Fanon,” which refers to matter invented by the public to fill the gaps left by law, is now highly susceptible to artificial intelligence. You no longer need the athlete to generate tradition; The audience can mount it upon request, and the character absorbs it seamlessly. It’s no surprise, then, that Haaland’s deepfakes were easily embraced online. The content doesn’t have to be real, it just has to fit the characters created by fans.

However, perhaps what the Haaland imitation suggests is a strange shift away from mere deep panic. Nevertheless Lots of audience In fact, it is fooled by AI video, yet a large percentage of the audience is actively subscribing and participating.

Fans have been doing this kind of thing for years. when @deptomcruz The account started posting frighteningly perfect fake videos of Tom Cruise on TikTok in 2021, and the response has been overwhelming in the millions. Likewise, A An AI-generated music track mimicking Drake and The Weeknd that debuted in 2023 It created fan buzz, and was broadcast enthusiastically before brands could pull it.

In the same year, Balenciaga the Pope It fooled half the internet for the afternoon, actually resulting in more praise for Balenciaga’s coat than concern about the artificial intelligence. This shows that if you love someone or something enough, you will suspend your disbelief and just deal with them.