Do you act on the apparent inventory tips of Martin Wolf, FT’s veteran lanche economic commentator?
His expert analysis works with many legal financial videos published on FT’s social media accounts, but it appears that the scammers produce something like persuading deepfake video images on Instagram and offer investment advice.
“Now, these three stocks are at a significant turning point, and we can make significant profits in the next two months,” says the persuasively-looking yet digitally manipulated wolf in a fake ad that invites people to join the “exclusive WhatsApp Investment Group.”
Meta, owner of WhatsApp and Instagram, told FT that they removed and disabled the ads, but as Deepfake Scams becomes mainstream, it would be wise for readers to be aware of more scams of this nature.
What’s behind the rise in deepfake scams?
Rapid rise in artificial intelligence (artificial intelligence). The technology needed to create synthetic videos and images is inexpensive, easy to obtain, and easy to use by scammers to create compelling content.
Celebrity deepfakes, including Taylor Swift, Elon Musk and The Stars of Dragons’ Nest, were created to promote everything from kitchenware to crypto fraud and diet pills. Last year, the British lost £76,000 in deep scams, where money saving expert Martin Lewis appeared to be promoting a non-existent Bitcoin investment scheme.
Nick Stapleton, presenter of the award-winning BBC series fraud interceptor and author of How to defeat con artists, says scammers have one important advantage.
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“Deepfakes work like an appeal to scammers, because many social media users simply don’t know what capabilities generative AI has when it comes to making persuasive spoofing videos,” he said. “They watch videos like Martin Wolf’s Deepfark and believe it’s real because they don’t have any information that makes them question it.”
Lewis, who claims to have “strange praise” for being the UK’s most scanned face, warned this week about the rise in ITV’s Good Morning UK’s Deep Fark ads.
“If you’re talking about investment, dieting, or other scam areas, if you’ve only seen them on social media, you don’t trust ads with celebrities,” he said. “If that’s in me, I don’t do advertising, so it’s fake. Anything that is rushing you to make money.
What other forms can I take for Deepfake videos?
Celebrities aren’t the only ones who can clone images. Scam experts say deepfakes are increasingly being used in video calls to impersonate senior staff from corporate organizations and convince other staff to process payments.
Last year, British engineering firm Arup lost $25 million (£20 million) when Hong Kong staff was persuaded to do a 15 bank transfer after digitally cloned the company’s chief financial officer over a video conference call.
Online influencers who post facial videos and images on social media platforms are particularly vulnerable as the more content they have from individuals who train AI, the more realistic imitation becomes.
As technology advances, Deepfake videos could make romance scams even more persuasive and could be used to manipulate images of friends and family who demand money.
What more should social media platforms do?
Social media platforms say they use facial recognition to find and defeat fake ads, but they don’t have to be up for long to gain traction.
As Martin Wolf himself said, “Can companies like Meta, which have a huge amount of resources, including artificial intelligence tools, automatically identify and remove such fraud, especially when they are informed of their existence?”
Meta told FT: “Even if you pretend to be a public figure, you remove and disable ads, accounts and pages, which opposes our policy.
“Crimes are relentless and continually evolving tactics to avoid detection, which is why they are constantly developing new ways for con artists to deceive others.
“The simple fact is that once these videos are placed on social media as advertisements, they go through a review process,” Stapleton says. “This is not a problem very quickly if something like meta is simply considering investing more profits in better screening and better moderation on general posts.”
Under the UK’s new online safety law, tech companies need to set performance goals to recognize illegal materials and quickly remove illegal materials to make it difficult to spread illegal content.
How can I find the video?
Stapleton’s number one tip for finding digitally manipulated images is to look at the mouths of people they think are talking on camera. Does it really shape words? Next, look at their skin: is it flat with no definition or wrinkles? And look at their eyes: do they flash at all or too many?
Finally, listen to the tone of their voices. “AI suffers from the range of human voices, so deepfakes tend to sound very flat, even with a lack of tone or emotion,” he said.
The deepfake video of FT’s wolves didn’t sound like him, but the con artist has an even better advantage as many social media users silently watch the video and read the caption.
Finally, be particularly vigilant about social media ads. If you can’t find any information reported elsewhere, it’s almost certainly a fake.
What if I’m disguised online?
Use the platform’s reporting tools to report scams to social media outlets. Also, don’t let your friends and followers mislead your fake accounts.
If you’re a victim of this deepfake scam or continue watching Martin Wolf’s Deepfake video on social media platforms, share your experience with FT at visual.investigations@ft.com
