Martin Lewis is warning Britons that scammers are using AI "deepfake" videos of him to con victims out of money.
The Money Saving Expert has described the new scam as “frightening” and said lives will be ruined unless big technology firms are stopped from publishing fraudulent content.
The videos dubbed "deepfakes" are realistic AI-generated clips of people that show them saying or doing things they have not done.
He warned his Twitter followers about the new scam on Thursday evening.
He warned his Twitter followers about the new scam on Thursday evening
“This is a scam by criminals trying to steal money. This is frightening, it’s the first deep fake video scam I’ve seen with me in it," he said.
"Govt & regulators must step up to stop big tech publishing such dangerous fakes. People’ll lose money and it’ll ruin lives.”
The deepfake video showed the financial expert apparently endorsing an investment scheme from Elon Musk using existing images and sounds to create convincing but artificial footage.
In the footage, the deepfake Lewis says: “Elon Musk presented his project in which he has already invested more than $3billion.
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"Musk’s new project opens up great investment opportunities for British citizens.
"No project has ever given such opportunities to residents of the country.”
It comes after Lewis sued Facebook for defamation in 2019 after the social media giant published fake adverts from scammers using his image.
In an agreement settled outside of court, Facebook committed to donating £3million to the Citizens Advice Scam Action, an organisation that provides one-to-one support for victims of fraud.
The deepfake video showed the financial expert apparently endorsing an investment scheme from Elon Musk using existing images and sounds to create convincing but artificial footage
Lewis said at the time: “The UK faces an epidemic of online scam ads – they’re everywhere.
"Yet disgracefully there’s little effective law or regulation to prevent them, and official enforcement is poor to non-existent, as these criminals are usually based outside of the EU.”
It is unknown which online platform the deepfake scam was first published.
