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Whoopi Goldberg has warned fans about a fake advertisement, which features an AI-edited video of her endorsing a weight loss drug.
The 69-year-old TV host addressed the fake social media campaign during Wednesday’s (February 5) episode of The View. According to Goldberg, a “phony weight loss ad” was circulating on Instagram, with her face in it.
“AI mouthed, saying all kinds of stuff,” she explained. “I don’t sell anything unless I say, ‘Hey, it’s me, Whoopi.’ That’s how you know it’s me.”
She continued to explain how that advertisement wasn’t real, adding: “They took something from CBS Sunday Morning and melded it, and they have me selling bad weight loss drugs.”
Goldberg told viewers not to buy this weight loss product and urged them to avoid the advertisement.
“Do not indulge in this. Do not look at it. Just get rid of it,” she added. “I don’t know what it is. I had nothing to do with it. I don’t want y’all to thinking that this is coming from me.”
Goldberg explained that she doesn’t “Have any reason to sell some other stuff,” recalling how she previously spoke out about using a weight loss drug, Mounjaro.
“I used Mounjaro, that is what I did,” she said. “But this stuff, I don’t know who these people are. That’s the problem with AI. You don’t know who made it. But I’m telling you, it’s a lot of BS. Do not fall for it.”
“Oh, and if you hear someone say, ‘Oh Whoopi said…’ You can say to them. ‘No, she just told me. That is not correct,’” Goldberg concluded.
Following the reveal of Oprah Winfrey’s special, “Shame, Blame, and the Weight Loss Revolution,” in March 2024, Goldberg first spoke out about taking weight loss medication.
“One of the things that’s helped me drop the weight…is Mounjaro,” she said during an episode of The View, recalling how she took the medication after she weighed 300 pounds while filming the 2022 movie, Till.
“My weight has come and gone, and up and down, but it’s never been an issue for me because I don’t listen to what other people say about me, so it has never been a problem,” Goldberg added. “But I think it’s very hard for people to just know what a normal weight would be…Everyone has something to say but no one said, ‘Oh, how you doing?’ Because it involves so many other things. And I think it’s a matter of how we treat ourselves.”
Elsewhere during Wednesday’s episode of The View, Goldberg addressed another hot topic: Beyoncé’s winning the Best Country Album and Album of the Year Grammy Awards for her 2024 record Cowboy Carter.
Goldberg defended the singer from certain criticism in Monday night’s The Ingraham Angle on Fox News, which saw conservative author Raymond Arroyo tell host Laura Ingraham that Beyoncé’s history-making wins were a “ridiculous outcome.”
“The country artists are not really happy about this,” Arroyo claimed. “I’m gonna put this in some context, Laura: Dolly Parton has 10 Grammys. Frank Sinatra had 11 Grammys. Beyoncé has 35. How is that possibly commensurate with that talent? I mean come on.”
Speaking on The View, Goldberg took Arroyo to task. “Sir, are you aware that you have to be in the music industry to be a Grammy voter? So, the cat sitter can’t just vote,” she began.
“Are you aware that when the Grammys began in 1959, there were only 28 categories, now there are 94?” she continued. “The year that Frank Sinatra got six nominations despite having two No. 1 albums, he only won one Grammy that night for his album cover — not even for his singing, for the album cover. Listen, man. You can’t do that. She earned it.”
In fact, Sinatra was only nominated four times at the 1959 Grammys. His sole win that year was for Best Recording Package.