Michael Mosley has been “deep faked” by scammers to promote health schemes online, an investigation has revealed.
The videos dubbed “deep fakes” are realistic AI-generated clips of people designed to impersonate them without their consent and some scammers have been using the technology to trick people into parting with their money.
Whilst it is hard to determine how convincing these videos are, a recent study suggested that half of all people shown deep fakes on scientific subjects cannot tell them apart from real videos.
A recent British Medical Journal (BMJ) investigation has discovered videos of Mosley, the TV doctor who died last month in Greece, being circulated online where he promotes products claiming to fix diabetes and high blood pressure.
Michael Mosley died last month aged 67
GettyAdditional videos feature other popular doctors such as Dr Hilary Jones and Dr Rangan Chatterjee. A video of Dr Jones posted on Facebook appeared to show him promoting a “cure” for high blood pressure - however, it was not him.
The fake videos are not officially endorsed by the celebrities whose images have been manipulated to appear in them.
Discussing the scam, retired doctor John Cormack said: “The bottom line is, it’s much cheaper to spend your cash on making videos than it is on doing research and coming up with new products and getting them to market in the conventional way.”
Henry Ajder, a deep fake expert, added that AI tools have swiftly improved in the last few years which has led to “a significant increase in this kind of activity”.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Dr Jones now employs a company to track and then remove deep fakes of him circulating on the internet
PA
He added: “The rapid democratisation of accessible AI tools for voice cloning and avatar generation has transformed the fraud and impersonation landscape.”
Deep fake videos of Dr Jones promoting phoney products appeared online last year.
“Some of the products that are currently being promoted using my name include those that claim to fix blood pressure and diabetes, along with hemp gummies with names like Via Hemp Gummies, Bouncy Nutrition, and Eco Health,” he said.
Wary of the trend, he now employs a company to track and then remove deep fakes of him circulating on the internet.
In the manipulated videos, he promotes products claiming to fix diabetes and high blood pressure
ITVHowever, he said that the manipulated videos are continuing to surge.
“There’s been a big increase in this kind of activity,” he said. “Even if they’re taken down, they just pop up the next day under a different name.”
Many of the manipulated videos were posted on Facebook and Instagram. A spokesperson for Meta, which owns both social media platforms, said: “We don’t permit content that intentionally deceives or seeks to defraud others, and we’re constantly working to improve detection and enforcement.
“We encourage anyone who sees content that might violate our policies to report it so we can investigate and take action.”