Indian powerlifter Keyaa Banerji is the toast of the town after producing an astonishing lift at the 2026 IPF World Sub-Junior and Junior Classic Powerlifting Championships. She went on to win the silver medal after lifting a massive 140kg. The event saw her deadlift more than three times her body weight, making the entire country proud. Her impressive lift quickly drew attention online, with fans and fellow sports followers celebrating her achievement.
However, her success has been marred by an unwanted and deeply disturbing experience away from the competition arena. She took to Instagram Stories to reveal that the sudden spotlight also exposed her to a darker side of social media.
In a series of Instagram stories, the Indian powerlifter spoke about facing online harassment, impersonation and the misuse of artificial intelligence to create images using her face and body. The experience, she indicated, has been particularly difficult because of her relatively private presence on social media.
“I recently won a deadlift silver medal at IPF Jr Worlds for India and while I appreciate the support and recognition, as an Indian female athlete I’ve also had to deal with sexual harassment online, accounts impersonating me, disturbing conversations surrounding my ethnicity, ancestry and caste, and the Worst – thousands of AI generated images of me with pictures of my body and face morphed and edited in very disturbing ways – it’s quite unnerving to be waking up everyday to my feed (and the feeds of every single person I know) flooded with these fake AI pictures,” Keyaa Banerji wrote on Instagram.
What more did she write?
Banerji explained that she has never been someone who regularly posts many photographs online. That made the sudden surge in attention even more unsettling, particularly as images connected to her began appearing across social media without her consent.
“I’ve always been a private person, and if you’ve known me in any capacity / followed my old account, you’d know I never posted pictures on it either! It only got more stressful when Instagram suspended my old account (a private account with 300 followers), hence, I’ve made this new one. I didn’t want to make it public, but I’m left with no choice if I want to have a say in a narrative about my own sport and accomplishments and stand up for myself without getting my account suspended again,” she wrote.
“The purpose of my sport in my life is just to challenge myself in a fun way, and I’m grateful to be competing at the level that I am. I never wanted to see myself everywhere like this, in fact, I really despised all these AI posters popping up without my consent,” she added.
Her experience highlights the growing concerns surrounding AI-generated and manipulated imagery. Speaking of Keyaa, she participated in the Junior Women’s 47kg category in Sun City, South Africa.