‘Today’s Sheinelle Jones Reveals the Painful Toll of Fake Stories About Her Family While She Was Grieving

Sheinelle Jones is a mother first, and one of the hardest parts of the past year, she says, was seeing AI turn her children into content for an interview that never happened.

Jones, 48, has three children with her late husband, Uche Ojeh: Kayin, 17, and 14-year-old twins Clara and Uche Jr. In March 2025, Ojeh died at 45 following a 5-month battle with glioblastoma, a rare and aggressive brain cancer.

In the past year, she’s been open about her grief and how difficult his death was for her and their kids. On Monday, Sept. 28, the Today with Jenna & Sheinelle co-host shared how fake AI content reached her family while she was on leave from the show.

The conversation started with fake AI images of singer Raye and Michael B. Jordan at the MTV VMAs. Jones said she had been through something similar, only much worse. “Gosh, I had it, times a billion, and it was awful,” she told co-host Jenna Bush Hager.

Scrolling Facebook, she found a post claiming she and her family had sat down with Katie Couric. It showed Jones, her children, and Couric in a living room that wasn’t hers, surrounded by photos.

“The only reason that anyone may guess that it’s not me,” Jones said, was a detail a girlfriend noticed: Clara’s glasses weren’t quite right. “It just did not happen.”

But the hardest part was staying quiet. “I wanted so badly to comment, ‘Hey guys, this isn’t me,'” she said. But she had been told not to “give it air,” since responding to a fake can help it spread. Turning to the audience, she asked, “You tell me what I should do.”

She also explained that it wasn’t just her kids, either. Jones also said she was fooled by a fake post with pictures of her and her husband until she noticed the hairstyle didn’t match how he wore it. Her mother has also been fooled by fake photos of Jones and the kids, calling to say how happy she was to see them doing well.

For Jones, the stakes go beyond embarrassment. Her family is still healing from an enormous loss, and fabricated images, especially ones that borrow the faces of her late husband and her children, make that harder. As AI-generated content grows more convincing, her story reminds us to look twice before believing or sharing what appears in your feed.