Dolly's not dead

Misreported celebrity deaths are nothing new and have occurred over nearly every medium. Mark Twain’s death was famously misreported on in newspapers in 1897 which elicited the quote “The report of my death is an exaggeration.” Winston Churchill’s death was reported on January 18, 1965, when a CBC television station accidentally released a pre-recorded tribute from Lester B. Pearson, resulting in at least one radio station reporting that Churchill had died. Churchill had a stroke on January 15 but would not die until January 24. Enough Alice Cooper fans were fooled by a satirical obituary in the magazine Melody Maker in the 1970s that he had to release the statement “I’m alive, and drunk as usual.”

AI image and video generators have lent a totally new dimension to misreported celebrity deaths. Early last week, Dolly Parton’s sister, Freida, posted on Facebook that she was praying for her sister who hadn’t been feeling well, urging fans to also pray for her. This led to an internet uproar with speculation flying that the country music star must be on death’s door. Parton had recently cancelled some tour dates citing health issues and upcoming procedures – and while the vague statement was likely to maintain some small amount of privacy, it did little to stop the rumour mill from churning.

On October 8, Dolly Parton posted a video with the caption “I ain’t dead yet!” to TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, explaining that, like Mark Twain, reports of her death had been exaggerated. Yes, she has been dealing with some health issues, but (in her words), “nothing major.”

There’s a saying that’s been attributed to Mark Twain and Winston Churchill (but said by neither): “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Today, a lie gets halfway around the world and the truth has to wade through a deluge of AI generated images to try and catch up. In the wake of Freida Parton’s post, a flood of AI slop featuring Reba McEntire (among other famous people) at Dolly Parton’s deathbed was posted to numerous Facebook sites using the internet speculation to generate traffic and clicks. A search for Dolly Parton on Facebook shows Parton’s official Facebook post as the second result sandwiched between two of these fake images.

It’s important to remember that in an ad-driven attention economy, our attention, likes, clicks, and views all translate to actual money for the people running fake news pages and websites. Where Parton’s official post is currently sitting at over 800,000 likes, many of the posts featuring lies, AI generated slop and dodgy website links have also garnered likes in the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands.

Another worrying aspect of this is the number of comments questioning whether Parton’s video was created with AI. Unfortunately, this is a fair question on the internet right now with tools like OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo 3 video generators making deepfakes even more convincing and easy for anyone to make. While Sora videos come with an identifying watermark, users have quickly figured out how to remove it. AI has upended how we trust, or don’t trust, what we see with our own eyes.

Parton’s video is real. It’s been reported on by numerous news outlets (not dodgy fake news sites), posted to her official social media accounts, and boosted by the social media accounts of her family. The video itself contains none of the weirdness and anomalies that AI video is still prone to and is shot in such a way that we see the context of where Parton was working (a green screen set being used to film commercials for the Grand Ol’ Opry) before settling on Dolly herself without any edits.

For me, this lack of trust in a shared reality is one of the more frightening risks of AI. Companies like OpenAI, X, Meta, and Google are rushing to release more powerful applications that can create fake but very convincing videos without fully understanding (or caring) how the technology can be used to undermine public trust. It’s not just the deepfakes that we need to worry about, but how the deepfakes cause us to not trust the truth when it is right in front of us.

At least, as of me writing this, Dolly Parton is alive and well. But we should all use this lesson to brush up on our media literacy skills and develop our discernment when interacting with online content. One of the most important things you can do, if nothing else, is not engage if you’re in doubt about the veracity of a picture or video. Content needs our likes and shares to spread, and if you just scroll past you can limit how far the lie travels.

Learn more

Reports of Mark Twain’s Quote About His Own Death Are Greatly Exaggerated 2023. Emily Petsko (Mental Floss) Last accessed 2025/10/14

List of prematurely reported obituaries (Wikipedia) Last accessed 2025/10/14

'I ain't dead yet!': AI images of Dolly Parton on deathbed trigger response from country star 2025. Maria Flannery (Eurovision News Spotlight) Last accessed 2025/10/14

Quote Origin: A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes 2014. (Quote Investigator) Last accessed 2025/10/14

Dolly Parton responds to concerns about her health: ‘I’m not dying’ 2025. Maria Sherman (Associated Press) Last accessed 2025/10/14

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