Princess responds after deepfake images circulate online, sparking false pregnancy claims

Fake images showing Norway’s Princess Märtha Louise with a baby bump have been removed days after they were circulated online, forcing the royal to issue a rare condemnation.

One of the artificially generated photos showed the 55-year-old with her husband, American shaman Durek Verrett, holding a sonogram.

The images appeared on two Facebook sites late last week, leading to rumours the princess and her husband were expecting their first child together.

Märtha Louise issued a statement, via her spokesperson, soon after the photos spread online, labelling the rumours as “false claims”.

“We are aware that false claims and manipulated images of Princess Märtha Louise are being spread on social media, and this is something we take seriously and are following up on,” the royal’s manager Carina Scheele Carlsen told Norwegian news outlet TV 2.

“Beyond this, we do not wish to comment further on the matter at this time.”

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The photos were shared on two Facebook accounts, written in Norwegian and German.

Meta has since removed the profiles for breaching its guidelines on coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

TV 2 shared screenshots of the fake images before the posts were taken down.

Princess Märtha Louise is the elder sister of Norway’s new King Haakon VIII, who ascended the throne on August 28 following the death of their father, the late King Harald V.

She married American-born Durek Verrett in 2024, a self-professed shaman and healer.

Their union has not been without controversy and in 2025, they starred in the Netflix documentary Rebel Royals, renewing calls for the princess to be stripped of her titles. 

Despite not having a formal royal role since November 2022, Princess Märtha Louise’s commercial endeavours have seen her earn the wrath of the royal house and public.

However, she and Verrett remain central figures in Norway’s royal family.

The deepfake photos are not the first time members of Norway’s royal family have been targeted.

In June, AI-generated photos showing then-Crown Princess Mette-Marit in hospital following her lung transplant were circulated. They showed the royal being comforted by her husband, the now-King Haakon and their daughter, Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra.

Another showed Mette-Marit being held by her son Marius Borg Høiby.

The images were later removed.

Other royal families across Europe have also been targeted by AI.

Earlier this year, a number of misinformation campaigns against Britain’s royal family were exposed, including one that suggested King Charles had secretly converted to Islam in the lead up to his state visit to the US.

Other accounts have spread AI-generated images of Prince William and Catherine’s family, claiming they had four children instead of three.

Computer-generated images of Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis meeting their late grandmother, Princess Diana, who died before they were born, are also rife online.

An AI-generated photo of Prince William and Catherine, supposedly taken when they were university students, even fooled a former employee of the royal household.

Grant Harrold, who used to work as a butler to King Charles between 2004 and 2011 at Highgrove, said he “genuinely mistook” the photo to be real, sharing it to his Instagram grid before issuing an apology.

Last year, Belgium’s royal family issued a statement after AI-generated images of Princess Elisabeth and another young royal circulated online, sparking rumours of a romance that was swiftly shut down by the palace.