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The fake Musk generated by AI has become the biggest online liar.

Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/NKmwfvHunBbEhE091RwD-A

Source: NetEase Technology (ID: tech_163)

Original title: The fake Musk generated by AI has become the biggest online liar

On August 15, according to US media reports, in recent years, artificial intelligence deep fake technology (Deepfake) has been widely used in online fraud, especially the use of fake Elon Musk videos for fraud. These videos mislead investors by simulating Musk's voice and movements. Such deep fake videos are low-cost and spread quickly, allowing scammers to easily expand the scope of their fraudulent activities, causing many victims to lose huge amounts of money due to false investment opportunities. As the risks of deep fake technology become increasingly prominent, the fraud losses it may cause are expected to reach billions of dollars each year.

The following is the full translation:

Steve Beauchamp, an 82-year-old retiree, wanted to add some income to his family, and he pinned his hopes on Elon Musk. Late last year, Beauchamp came across a video in which Musk seemed to recommend an aggressive investment plan that promised quick profits. Inspired by this, Beauchamp quickly contacted the company behind the video and opened an investment account with $248. However, in the following weeks, he gradually increased his investment and eventually used more than $690,000 from his retirement account.

But soon after, the money disappeared, into the hands of a group of scammers using artificial intelligence to perpetrate a new type of digital fraud. The scammers cleverly doctored a real interview with Musk, using AI technology to replace his voice and fine-tune his lip movements to match a new script they wrote for the digital man. The manipulation was almost unnoticeable to the average viewer.

Beacham recalled the video and said with emotion: "He has a clear image in the video and can be recognized as Musk at a glance. As for whether it was AI that made him say those words, I can't be sure now. But as far as the video is concerned, if someone asked me to identify him from the crowd, I would definitely be able to point it out."

01

Musk becomes a frequent target of deep fakes

In recent months, the internet has been flooded with thousands of such AI-powered videos, known as "deepfakes," in which fake Musk images have misled potential investors. Deloitte estimates that such AI-powered deepfakes could result in billions of dollars in fraud losses each year.

These videos are extremely cheap to produce, can be completed in minutes, and are promoted through social media, including paid ads on Facebook, which greatly expands their reach. Francesco Cavalli, co-founder and director of threat intelligence at Sensity, a company that monitors and detects deep fake videos, warned: "This may be the largest deep fake scam ever."

The videos are often lifelike, capturing Musk’s trademark staccato intonations and South African accent. Scammers often start with a real video, such as an interview with the Wall Street Journal, and retain the reporter’s voice in the fake video, which adds to the authenticity of the video.

Using advanced lip-syncing technology, the scammers adjusted Musk's mouth movements to perfectly match their fake lines. They also added AI voices using voice cloning tools that can copy any voice from a sample clip. The final ad may also include fake graphics that mimic the style of news organizations, which may be quite convincing to the average web user.

According to Sensity’s analysis, Musk is the most common spokesperson in these videos. In nearly 2,000 analyzed samples, especially since the end of last year, he appeared in nearly a quarter of deep fake scams. In those videos with cryptocurrency as the theme, this proportion is even as high as nearly 90%. Deep fake ads also often use famous investors such as Warren Buffett and business leaders such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

While it’s difficult to get an accurate count of how many deepfakes are circulating online, searching Facebook’s ad library for common scam-related language found hundreds of thousands of ads, many of which included deepfake videos. While Facebook has removed much of the content for policy violations and disabled the accounts involved, others remain online, and more appear seemingly every day.

YouTube is also full of these fake contents, and these videos often have the label "live". In fact, these are pre-recorded deep fake videos. Searching keywords such as "Elon Bitcoin conference" on YouTube, you can see dozens of videos disguised as live broadcasts, in which deep fake Musk is peddling cryptocurrency scams, which is extremely misleading.

After former U.S. President Donald J. Trump spoke at a Bitcoin conference, dozens of videos labeled "live" quickly appeared on YouTube, showing a pre-recorded deep fake Musk video claiming to double any cryptocurrency sent to his account. While these videos attracted a large number of viewers, with some of them having hundreds of thousands of views, YouTube said the scammers may have used trolls to artificially inflate the number of views.

According to a report by the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Better Business Bureau, a Texas resident lost $36,000 worth of Bitcoin in February 2023 after seeing a scam message disguised as Musk through a so-called "live" video on YouTube. The resident said: "I transferred Bitcoin, but I didn't receive anything."

02

FB and YouTube are the hardest hit

YouTube said in a statement that between January and March this year alone, the platform removed more than 15.7 million channels and more than 8.2 million videos, most of which were deleted for violating its anti-spam policies.

In light of the prevalence of false advertising, Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest has filed a civil lawsuit against Facebook's parent company Meta, accusing it of negligence in its advertising business, claiming that these advertising businesses misled innocent users into making bad investments. It is reported that Forrest's own videos were also used to create deep fake ads.

Meta responded that it is training automatic detection systems to identify fraudulent activities on the platform, but also admitted that this is a complex cat-and-mouse game because well-funded fraud gangs are constantly changing their strategies to evade detection. YouTube reiterated its policy prohibiting fraud and video tampering, and in March this year required all creators to make clear disclosures when using AI to create realistic content.

The internet is flooded with reports of scams, many of which have cost people their life savings. Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission issued a warning in May about scams involving Musk. Earlier this year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the FBI also warned Americans about the rise in AI-driven cybercrime and deepfake scams.

"Criminals are using AI as a force amplifier to make cyberattacks and other criminal activity more effective and difficult to detect," the FBI said in an emailed statement.

Digital fraud has grown in tandem with the internet. But a new wave of deepfakes featuring Musk emerged last year as sophisticated AI tools became available to the public, allowing ordinary people to clone celebrity voices or precisely manipulate videos, attracting the attention of the porn industry, meme makers and a growing number of scammers.

“It’s changing now because organized crime has figured out there’s money to be made this way,” said Lou Steinberg, founder of cybersecurity research lab CTM Insights. He predicts we’ll see more and more of these fake attempts to defraud money.

While the AI-generated videos aren’t perfect — Musk’s voice can sound robotic in some videos, for example, and his lip movements don’t always match his lines — experts warn that they can be convincing enough for some scam targets, and that the technology is improving over time.

According to Sensity's Cavoli, the videos are very cheap to produce, costing about $10, and most scammers use a range of free or cheap tools to piece together the fake videos in less than 10 minutes. They are primarily based in India, Russia and Eastern Europe.

“It works,” Cavoli said. “So they’re going to continue to expand this campaign, cross borders, translate it in multiple languages, and keep spreading the scam to more targets.”

03

Elderly people are a perfect target

This type of scam often uses high-return AI investment software as a cover to initially lure victims into investing a small amount of money, such as $250. Then, by exaggerating the value-added effect of the investment, they are gradually induced to increase their investment amount.

A video from Tesla's shareholder meeting was also faked, in which Musk explained an AI-powered automated trading product that claimed to be able to double investment returns every day.

Experts who study the cryptocurrency community note that Musk has a unique global fan base of conservatives, anti-establishment figures and cryptocurrency enthusiasts who often look for unconventional ways to make money, making them ideal targets for these scams.

“There’s definitely a group of people who believe there’s a hidden secret to wealth,” said Molly White, a researcher who studies the cryptocurrency community. She noted that some people always fantasize about mastering the secret to wealth and believe that once they find it, they will become rich overnight.

Scammers particularly like to target older internet users who may know something about cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence or Musk, but are not familiar with safe ways to invest.

“Older people have always been a popular target for scammers, even before the rise of social media,” said Finn Brunton, a professor of science and technology studies at the University of California, Davis, who is an expert on the crypto market.

Beacham, a widower, worked as a sales representative for a company in Ontario, Canada, until he retired at the age of 75. He encountered advertising fraud shortly after joining Facebook in 2023. Although he remembered seeing Musk on CNN's live broadcast, a CNN spokeswoman said Musk had not been interviewed by the station for many years.

In December, Beacham wired $27,216 to a company called Magna-FX, which led him to believe his investment was increasing in value, according to email exchanges between him and the company. During that time, a sales agent even used software to remotely control Beacham's computer and transfer funds without authorization.

When Beauchamp tried to withdraw his funds, he was told he needed to pay $3,500 in management fees and another $3,500 in commissions. He paid those amounts, but was later told he needed to pay $20,000 to release a portion of his funds, which was about $200,000. The scammers demanded more, even though he had already exhausted his retirement savings, maxed out his credit cards, drawn down his line of credit and borrowed from his sister to invest and pay for fees. By this time, Beauchamp realized the severity of his problem and contacted the police.

Most traces of Magna-FX have vanished from the Internet, including the company’s website, phone numbers and email addresses used by agents with whom Beauchamp had communicated. A company with a similar name and services did not respond to a request for comment.

"At this point, I am willing to accept all the criticism and ridicule as punishment for my gullibility," Beauchamp said in a report submitted to the Better Business Bureau.

He said he was currently relying on a smaller retirement account and pension that he had not disclosed to the scammers to make ends meet, and he had planned to use these savings to travel around the world. Beauchamp has reported the case to the local police, but the case is progressing slowly.

“My case was put in the queue because there were so many fraud cases everywhere,” he said. “I didn’t hold out much hope.”

*Header image source: Visual China

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