British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking, has been circulating a video that social media users claim shows her on the streets of Quebec City, Canada’s French-speaking capital. However, this clip is fake. The account that first shared the video confirmed that the video was created by using artificial intelligence to insert Maxwell’s likeness into the scene.
“Canadian pizza lovers think they’ve met classic pizza delivery girl Ghislaine Maxwell,” the caption of the Feb. 21, 2026, Facebook video claims, seemingly alluding to the debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory.
The clip shows a woman resembling Maxwell doing a double take and denying she is Ghislaine after someone calls her that name on a Quebec City street.
Numerous other posts, some in Spanish, that have been viewed millions of times on Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok popularized the video’s visuals. Some users claimed to have provided analysis of the person’s facial features, pointing to her physical resemblance to Maxwell as evidence that she is not in prison and walking free in Canada.
“If you look at the woman in the video, it’s the same woman,” the speaker said in another Facebook video on Feb. 21.
Screenshot of an Instagram post taken on February 25, 2026
Screenshot of a Facebook post taken on February 26, 2026
Maxwell was convicted in 2022 and is the only person serving a sentence for crimes related to financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
She was transferred from a federal prison in Florida to a minimum security facility in Texas in August 2025. After being subpoenaed to testify about her relationship with Epstein, the U.S. House Oversight Committee released an audio recording of Maxwell’s February 9, 2026 deposition in which she refused to speak without being granted pardon.
Documents related to Mr. Epstein’s alleged crimes recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice mention politicians, royals and celebrities, but doctored images of celebrities juxtaposed with the late financier and associates such as Mr. Maxwell are also frequently circulated.
A video of Maxwell purportedly walking through Quebec City is similarly fake.
Many of the posts resharing the footage include the username “clump.qc,” which appears to be the first Instagram and TikTok account to share the footage on February 18th (archives here and here).
The profile is filled with similar videos (archived here, here and here) of seemingly unexpected encounters with public figures such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Quebec Premier François Legault, and Epstein himself, often using the hashtags “prank” and “humor.”
Contacted by AFP, clump.qc confirmed that Maxwell’s clip was a manipulation created with the artificial intelligence tool Remaker.ai. The user said in a Feb. 25 direct message that the intent behind the video was humor and “rage fodder,” not misinformation.
According to the original poster, the video was created by replacing Maxwell’s likeness with a clip. The landmarks in the video appear to reflect the actual scene near the Saint-Jean Gate, a landmark in Old Quebec City (archived here).
Other news outlets that reported on Maxwell’s fake video noted that clump.qc’s Instagram posts now include meta artificial intelligence warning labels that were not present when the video was first shared.
Read more about AFP’s coverage of misinformation in Canada here.
