It turns out that Elon Musk appears in about 25% of deepfake scam videos
With the development and spread of AI, anyone can easily create
How 'Deepfake Elon Musk' Became the Internet's Biggest Scammer - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/14/technology/elon-musk-ai-deepfake-scam.html
Steve Beacham, an 82-year-old Canadian resident, saw a video on the Internet in which Musk was promoting an 'investment company that promises significant returns' at the end of 2023. So Beacham contacted the company, Magna-FX, which was advertised in the video, and opened an account with $248 (about 37,000 yen).
After that, in addition to the investment funds, transfers under the names of 'management fees' and 'fees for transferring funds' accumulated, and Mr. Beecham eventually transferred more than $690,000 (about 100 million yen) to Magna-FX. At some point, Magna-FX's staff took control of Mr. Beecham's computer via software and moved his investment funds.
At this point, Beauchamp had almost completely used up his retirement savings, taken out credit card debt and borrowed money from his sister, but Magna-FX still wanted him to pay more. He finally contacted police, who discovered the whole thing was a scam.
After the scam was discovered, all traces of the website, phone number, and email address that Beacham had used to communicate with Magna-FX were taken offline. All that was left for Beacham was the retirement accounts and pension that he hadn't shared with the scammers, and his plans to retire and travel the world were dashed.
The promotional video featuring Musk that Beacham saw appears to have been created by a scammer based on a real interview with Musk. Using AI tools, it is possible to have Musk's voice read a prepared script and even fine-tune his mouth movements to match the script, making it difficult for viewers to tell at first glance that it is a deep fake.
These deepfake scam videos have flooded the internet in recent months, with accounting firm
Deepfake scam videos cost just a few dollars to create and take just a few minutes to create. 'This scam works, so scammers will continue to expand their campaigns across countries, translate them into multiple languages, and spread the scam to even more targets,' said Francisco Cavalli, co-founder and head of threat intelligence at Sensity , a company that monitors and detects deepfakes.
Below is an example of a deepfake scam video created by a scammer. Based on an actual interview conducted by the Wall Street Journal, an AI tool is used to read the script in Musk's voice and slightly modify his mouth movements. In addition, subtitles from an interview with foreign media outlet BBC are inserted to make it look like a real interview video. The deepfake scam video is quite realistic, and even imitates the characteristic rhythm of Musk's speech and his native South African accent.
It's difficult to quantify exactly how many deepfake scam videos there are on the Internet, but Facebook has a large number of them in its ad library, and YouTube has also reportedly been streaming pre-prepared deepfake scam videos live.
Sensity analyzed more than 2,000 deepfake scam videos that have appeared since the second half of 2023 and found that Musk appeared in about a quarter of the total, making him by far the most frequently featured in deepfake scam videos. In particular, in cryptocurrency scams, Musk's appearance rate exceeded 90%. In addition to Musk, other people who frequently appeared in deepfake scam videos include well-known investor Warren Buffett and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
According to Molly White, an expert who studies the cryptocurrency community, Musk's fan base of conservatives, anti-establishment, and cryptocurrency enthusiasts often seek unconventional ways to gain wealth, making them ideal targets for cryptocurrency scams. 'There are definitely people who believe that there is a secret to wealth hidden somewhere. They think they just need to find that secret,' White said.
In addition, scammers often target 'older internet users' who are familiar with virtual currencies, AI, and Mr. Musk, but are not familiar with safe investments. 'Older people have always been more vulnerable to scams and easier to profit from,' said Finn Brunton , a professor at the University of California, Davis, who pointed out that seniors have been targets of scams even before the emergence of platforms like Facebook.
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in Web Service, Security, Posted by log1h_ik