Because the headline is about what the model said, and the model said that it was AI. Neither the headline nor the article says that she’s right about it, just that her face was altered dramatically, which is absolutely relevant when you consider some of the most widespread uses for visual AI right now. This might have just been photoshop, but it looks a lot like some of the AI-powered TikTok filters, so it’s worth a conversation as to why we feel the need to do this to people’s faces at all.