Elon Musk Becomes the Front Face in Deepfakes Scams

Deepfake videos can be created in just a few dollars and it takes a few minutes to do so making them a cheap and fast way to commit a scam. That is why deepfakes are also known as cheap fakes.

Last year an 82-year-old retiree named Steve Beauchamp lost nearly $700000 in an investment scam that targeted him through an advertisement using Elon Musk’s deepfake video in which his fake endorsed a highly profitable investment scheme with rapid returns. After draining a long series of small payments, the scammers suddenly vanished as usual.

It turned out that scammers manipulated a 1-minute video of Elon Musk and successfully managed to swap his lip movements with voice cloning to make the video look highly convincing and it did its job hooking Steve as one of their prime targets. 

Why Elon Musk’s Face is Used for Deepfake Video Scams?

Deepfake Frauds need to look realistic and convincing. We are well aware that celebrity endorsements can highly impact customer decisions. Targeting people’s digital preferences of vulnerable people like Steve, Generative-AI-based Deepfake videos are flooded over the internet promoting different scams. Musk’s face is being swapped and morphed in thousands of deepfake videos targeting wealthy and vulnerable individuals. Most of these Deepfake Fraud endorse a fake cryptocurrency investment opportunity, or another seemingly lucrative investment option having some sort of technological breakthrough involved. 

It is estimated that AI deepfake scams account for more than a billion dollars caused by impersonation fraud attempts.

Elon Musk being the most influential tech leader is used in nearly a quarter of the total AI Deepfake scams detected last year. Particularly, in cryptocurrency scams marketed using deepfakes, Elon Musk’s deepfake face was used in 90% of the fake content.

How Fraudsters Trick Users in Believing Their Deepfake Videos?

It is a fact that YouTube has millions of videos labeled as Live that are prerecorded deepfake videos. Using the word ‘Live’ to label deepfake videos increases the convincing effect for an unaware user. Moreover, using AI tools that can create highly realistic celebrity deepfakes images and videos of celebrities endorsing an offer targeting people’s greed becomes imperceptible for users. YouTube is on the move to remove spam content from its platform where it recently removed 15 million + videos that were found spam.

Offsite Liveness | A Handy Anti-Deepfake Tool

Offsite Liveness Detection is a recommended solution to protect people from falling prey to deepfake video scams. Offsite Liveness analyzes video content that is prerecorded and uploaded anywhere. Facial recognition tools having this feature of Offsite Liveness can detect deepfake faces in such videos and promptly warn the viewers to stop pursuing such an offer or even block such content right away. 

Suggested Read: Ferrari Executive Foils Deepfake Scam with Quick Thinking