Tauseeq Haider, arguably Pakistan’s most iconic bachelor, has maintained his unwed status after AI-generated images claimed he had married fellow actor Farah Saadia earlier this week.
Haider appeared on the show Rise and Shine with Zohaib Hassan and Nadia Khan where he said he found the whole thing “very disturbing” and urged content creators not to “hurt someone’s family life and privacy” in the pursuit of views.
Starting the segment on a jovial note, the actor recalled how he had woken up on Tuesday morning to a barrage of messages from everyone he knew. Some were congratulating him on getting married, others wanted to know why they hadn’t been told sooner.
Haider was, of course, puzzled and only saw his ‘wedding photos’ after scrolling through some chats. He said his first thought was, “Wow, what a bride and groom they’ve made [out of us].”
Haider said it took him around 10 minutes to actually understand what had happened, after which he called Saadia and said, “Congratulations Farah, we’re married now.” She was having none of it and asked what he was on about.
After explaining the whole thing and laughing at the absurdity of the situation, he said Saadia became disturbed a few hours after they had discussed it at which point he suggested they should make a video explaining what had happened; she readily agreed and rushed to his office.
The video , in which the pair start by congratulating each other on getting married but quickly refute the news as a hoax, is up on their Instagram accounts. They joked that the “professional” YouTubers that had gotten them married were now obligated to send wedding gifts from the money they made off the fake news.
Haider told Hassan and Khan the video had been effective and people understood he still wasn’t married. He also admitted he wasn’t tech savvy enough to have realised some people will take the first few seconds of him and Saadia congratulating each other and try to pass it off as confirmation of their wedding.
The actor said they only took a light-hearted approach to the problem because everyone is out ranting about how AI is ruining things and nobody would’ve listened if he did the same.
He did say that this wasn’t the only problem he had with AI and spoke about his new drama Shaidai , in which everyone is convinced his on-screen death was AI-generated — he insists it wasn’t and it was just really good camerawork.
