Martin Lewis warns against ‘first’ deepfake video scam ad circulating on Facebook

Image credit: Jakub Porzycki/Nuru Photography/Getty Images

For a glimpse of how AI-generated misery is rapidly accelerating on our screens, thanks to the development of synthetic media that enable more sophisticated forms of deception, check out: please give me. this clip UK consumer finance champion Martin Lewis appears to have shilled an investment opportunity backed by Elon Musk.

Except, of course, that footage (also embedded in the tweet below) is an AI-generated deepfake and the investment opportunity is a scam not backed by Lewis (or Musk). The former also emphasizes that he never appears in ads that endorse third-party products or services, but that’s because scammers repeat his image on social media ads to trick people into parting with their money. It doesn’t stop you from exploiting it…

According to Lewis, who was interviewed about deepfakes, ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” According to (GMB), a video of him shilling for investment fraud has gone viral on Facebook. And is he furious about it — he’s already gone to the trouble of suing the tech giant for inaction over fraudulent ads featuring his image, and in 2018 To stop the scammers, considering they were using their own celebrity to bring a defamation lawsuit against a tech giant trying to get them to do something.

“It’s going viral on Facebook right now,” Lewis said of deepfake videos. “As far as I know, this is the first deepfake scam ad we have seen. will only get better.”

“I am genuinely angry about this,” he added. “People will know that I have been campaigning for proper regulation of fraudulent advertising for many years.”

Lewis settled a defamation lawsuit against Facebook in 2019, announcing that Facebook would provide an ad reporting button to make it easier for UK users to report questionable ads, and making some changes to how it operates. agreed. It also pledged £3 million worth of funds to help set up a fraud advisory service for citizens.

But, of course, it’s just a drop in the ocean of money that the British routinely lose to scammers. (Last year, UK consumer and business losses to fraud and financial fraud hit a record £1.3bn.)

It’s also falling into the seas of Facebook parent company Meta’s revenues (a staggering $116.61 billion in 2022 full-year earnings), but the company does extensive tracking and profiling of web users. They get it by selling access to the behavioral targeting tools they use. .

Meta’s advertising tools basically do the heavy lifting for scammers behind ads like Lewis deepfakes. Because once a scammer has crafted a compelling deceptive message, it can be incorporated directly into the massive ad targeting tools that offer it, ensuring successful fraud. Leveraging Meta’s ongoing mass monitoring of web users, it attacks the feeds of the most susceptible (and vulnerable) users to reach new victims.

When asked for a response to the deepfake, a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch that it was investigating.

The company also sent us the following statement:

Our platform does not allow this type of advertising and the original video was proactively removed by our team. It also removed a number of copycat ads using the same image.

But how did Meta upload another scam (even though this time, the fake’s movements and voices were strikingly similar to the real thing) with Lewis’ outright goodwill? When asked if he allowed it, he did not give a direct answer. platform.

While Facebook/Meta was directly named and humiliated by Lewis, the consumer advocate is also angry at the UK government for failing to address the fraudulent ad problem.

In an interview with GMB, he sharply criticized the lack of response from the government after two consultations about online advertising. And while the online safety bill was expanded to cover fraudulent advertising last year in the wake of the campaign by Lewis and others, he also said the bill is still in Congress and the length of time it will take to pass it. I also attacked the length. In the meantime, users are at the mercy of advertising platforms’ lukewarm enforcement of their own terms of service.

“Social media and other big tech advertising platforms still have a pristine wild west where scammers can get away with nothing,” warned Lewis, adding:of big tech companies paid to promote the advertisement. And these destroy the lives of vulnerable people, and many non-vulnerable people. “