Deepfake celebrities begin shilling products on social media, causing alarm

Technology@lemmy.world – 264 points – 9 months ago

Deepfake celebrities begin shilling products on social media, causing alarm::Hanks and other celebrities have recently become targets of AI-powered ad scams.

“We didn’t see this coming.” - nobody.

Yea it's a pretty bleak and dystopian future ahead. This next US election is going to be wild.

Not just in the US.

Believe it or not, people outside the US also have computers and elections lol

Where's your proof

I am outside the US, but it's the next big, global election. You'll watch it, I'll watch it, the world will watch it.

And the fact that it could very well be the end of any semblance of democracy the US has left if Trump and his ilk get power again.

Please don't, I did a little mouth sick.

There's an attitude I'm seeing in this thread, I already responded to someone about it, that I find really disturbing. The attitude that the less intelligent or the less tech-savvy deserve to be scammed by this.

I don't think people deserve to be scammed for those reasons and, as I said, I'm pretty disturbed by that attitude.

Completely agree. Not only is it disturbing how little people care, but there's a far bigger picture.

Right now it's celebrities shilling products. What happens when it's political figures? What happens when the messages spread misinformation or violence?

It doesn't matter whether or not you fall for it as an individual. It will impact society. Full stop.

People need to be more understanding and compassionate. If you know so much and are so great at identifying these things and so technologically savvy, help educate those around you. Vote in every election, including local elections, to vote into power people who understand these issues and will act on the best interest of the people.

Those people will be the same ones using AI to troll people. They also sidestep the idea of anyone’s likeness being their own, and the obvious slippery slope of AI being used to tell straight up lies using the faces of people who should be able to be trusted.

There's a fine line between deserving of being scammed because of who they are and consequences of actions or inaction and it's important we do not cross that line.

People have to take some responsibility to think critically about the content they consume. If people are not capable of consuming content responsibly, perhaps they should not consume content at all.

The alternative is policing content itself, and that is a very dangerous place to be for a whole host of other reasons.

If people are not capable of consuming content responsibly, perhaps they should not consume content at all.

And how do you propose to block them from it? Do you think the corporations that create that content care if their consumers are responsible?

I can't help thinking that there are easy solutions to this. Mainly because I don't take any notice of advertising, at least not in the sense that AI makes a difference.

I have no other exposure to it aside from where it's being pointed out, such as here.

What I do is things like this:

When the ad break comes on, press the mute button.

When I can't do that, I overtly ignore the ads, eg I will talk over them or fein extreme annoyance of them, or sometimes I ridicule or attack them with exaggeration. Sometimes all at once.

I have always hated being invaded by direct advertising, and I push back against it. But I also don't watch reality TV or read celebrity news. I don't tend to listen to commercial radio or use anything by Meta or X.

Ad before a TV episode? Skip.

YouTube ads? ReVanced.

Internet browser ads? Adblock.

Who follows an actor on social media, what's the point, haven't people got anything better to do?

My favorite method is not give a single fuck about the opinion of any celebrity. But fuck ads in general

What if someone tries to impersonate someone with a high reputation such as a professional or a politician?

I'm not saying deepfakes aren't a problem, they're extremely worrisome for the future trustworthiness of any visual media, just that people shouldn't listen to celebrities.

People can already do that with written media, and we have ways to deal with that.

There are ways, but whether or not they are effective enough remains open for debate. During the pandemic misinformation reigned supreme, setting millions of people back in the process. Adding deepfakes to the mix is not going to make things better.

Thank you for the suggestion for YouTube

Yw. I've found there's a few others as well that have varying degrees of functionality. RV suits me though, it's control over the interface is fairly comprehensive. I hate the news bar and shorts nonsense. It's wonderful.

Teenagers? Weren’t you young and naive too once?

Yes, then I got scammed on runescape once and became old and jaded.

Sure. And I followed music and a little fashion like everyone does.

And yet even in those days, actors selling things was never anything more than that; actors being used for advertising.

Sometimes that can be genuinely funny, or moving etc, but I'm not invested in any actor past their acting ability.

Oh look, Robert Deniro is in an ad for pasta sauce, is not the same as exposing myself to every published thought of Robert Deniro. He's a great actor and he's probably a great guy, but his machinations on the school run or biscuits? Nope.

I've been using Mastodon recently and it's rapidly becoming clear why I never used Twitter. I don't give shit and I've got better things to do.

Like Lemmy and trying to stop using Reddit. And family and work and my hobbies....

I guess if you’re stupid enough to buy a dental plan based on Tom Hanks’s recommendation, you’re also dumb enough to think Tom Hanks still looks that young.

Stupid people deserve consumer protection too. Don't be a snob.

Problem is a lot of the stupid people are the ones voting to destroy the protections they need.

A lot of them or all of them? Because if it isn't all of them, they deserve those protections.

I don't know... that argument seems to me like saying because some poor people are Republicans and vote against it, they don't deserve universal healthcare.

Protections should be universal.

I didn't say they don't deserve it, just that they don't make the best decisions when it comes to what is best for themselves.

Even more reason why they need protection.

Feels like a symptom of poor education to me.

Society in general seems to give up quickly on people who might need extra support to learn, without really considering the consequences

The point is these people are already being scammed, regardless of if it's the real Tom Hanks.

Unfortunately, still "smart" enough to vote.

Been going on for years already,... They only noticed this now? 😅

People who buy stuff just because a celebrity tells them make me lose hope in humanity. And I'm not talking about deepfakes, which are bad for their own reasons. But I find the fact that people buy a product just because there's a famous face next to it rather stupid.

Did anyone ever think that celebrities that appeared in advertisements actually used or liked the products they are paid to promote?

This seems like false outrage.

I think the issue is more that people think something is legitimate, and when they go to purchase it or something they get their identity stolen

The celebrities may pay lip service to that, but really they're concerned about unlicensed use of their image.

Oh my sweet summer child

I know, I have a bad habit of underestimating the collective stupidity of people.

They particularly liked the part of their partnership when the cheque cleared in their bank account.

Digital advertisement platforms need significantly harder ad regulation. We do it for other mediums, digital should be more regulated considering the reach and revenue.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The next day, CBS anchor Gayle King warned of a similar scheme using her likeness to sell a weight-loss product.

Also on Monday, YouTube celebrity MrBeast posted on social media network X about a similar scam that features a modified video of him with manipulated speech and lip movements promoting a fraudulent iPhone 15 giveaway.

As we've warned, convincing AI deepfakes are an increasingly pressing issue that may undermine shared trust and threaten the reliability of communications technologies by casting doubt on someone's identity.

Currently, companies like Google and OpenAI have plans to watermark AI-generated content and add metadata to track provenance.

Meanwhile, social media networks will likely need to step up moderation efforts, reacting quickly when suspicious content is flagged by users.

Almost a year later, with technology advancing rapidly, a small taste of that chaos is arguably descending upon us, and our advice could just as easily be applied to video and photos.

The original article contains 585 words, the summary contains 155 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

"Elon has an invention that can turn anyone in to a millionaire in 30 days!"

These celebrities should be making $60,000 to $150,000 like the rest of us anyways. What the hell do they produce

Many actors make that, or much less. The big names put asses in seats though. No one is paying money to watch my loser brother in law pretending to be stranded on an island yelling at volleyballs.

I'd pay $1 to see that.

They would. But still doesn't justify the pay. Many people come together to make films and actors are the least hard working of all of them. They exploited the system just like these AI systems are. Its not something I have sympathy for and if they replace actors with computer generated models and the profession goes back to just a regular job, I feel like we haven't lost anything