William Shatner is alive and well. The veteran actor took the time to debunk fake news circulating about him online, assuring his fans that he isn’t dying of cancer while also shutting down other false claims. Shatner called out the source of the unfounded rumors and warned fans to take stories about him with a grain of salt unless they come directly from him.. Starbuck / AFF-USA.com / MEGA. On April 2, the “Star Trek” actor took to social media to alert his followers to a few fake stories circulating online about him. As he noted, he wanted to post on April 1 but feared followers would take it as an April Fool’s Day joke.. “There is a page on @facebook that is using AI to create horrible fake news stories about me,” Shatner wrote, adding the page he was referring to: Beanstalk Functions. The actor added, “This is the downside of AI and yellow journalism. While it can be a wonderful tool in the right hands, it can be used as a weapon in the wrong hands.”. On X, Shatner wrote, “My daughter came over to tell me her daughter heard that I had brain cancer.” He accompanied the post with a photo of himself that his daughter took as proof that he is doing well, saying he’s “fit as a fiddle.”. In his post, Shatner included screenshots of the news stories from the Beanstalk Functions page. One post read that he was “diagnosed with stage IV glioblastoma.” Another was an AI-generated photo of the actor on a hospital bed, smiling. Another post read, “Erika Kirk Insults William Shatner: ‘Sit down, you 60-year-old rock star’.”. “None of these stories are true but they apparently seem genuine enough for fans to repost them across social media and send messages of support to me and my family all while the culprits behind the account make money,” Shatner wrote.. The Beanstalk Functions profile claims it’s a Cape Town, South Africa-based events company. “We are here to help you Celebrate, Innovate, and Decorate,” it read.. ZUMAPRESS.com / MEGA. In his post, Shatner said that he has alerted Facebook Support, but they won’t take the page down. Hours later, however, the Facebook page was no longer available.. The actor did some deep research and said the stories from Beanstalk Functions were linked to a website hosted on Next.js. He contacted Guillermo Rauch, the CEO of Vercel, which oversees Next.js, asking him to “remove the posted fake AI stories” created by Beanstalk Functions. However, he was told, “the company cannot see a reason” to remove them, as he shared on X.. Shatner pointed out Vercel’s Terms and Conditions, citing sections about fraud, scams, and HIPAA violations. “I guess a fake story revealing I supposedly have brain cancer doesn’t fall under HIPAA?” the actor wrote.. G.N.Miller/NYPost / MEGA. While he isn’t battling cancer, Shatner recently had surgery on his shoulder. As The Blast reported in early March, he had a nasty fall while out riding his horse. He explained that his horse w
