Prince William dragged into online video scandal as royal urged to take action

Social media users were greeted with the message: "Good afternoon, honoured citizens of the United Kingdom.

"I am pleased to announce that I, Prince William, and the entire Royal Family fully support Prime Minister Keir Starmer's initiative and his new platform."

While other videos of the the purported Prime Minister telling the public have emerged in which he says: "Your life is about to change.

"I am Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Labour Party... I have been waiting for you."

But in a creepy twist, it was swiftly revealed the two public figures were AI-generated "deep-fakes", drawn up by scammers to push Britons to part with their cash online.

The adverts in which the artificial prince and PM appeared claimed to net customers £1,000 every day - while an investigation by media insight firm Fenimore Harper found that Facebook had been paid £21,000 to host the fake videos online.

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Fenimore Harper's founder Marcus Beard issued a warning to the palace, and raised fears that public figures could be forced to respond to the AI threats in the years ahead.

Beard told Newsweek that the Royal Family being targeted by scammers to hawk their products online was a growing trend, and said that the ever-improving tech needed to "fake" the royals is "getting better and more malicious".

He said: "I think it's on everyone, certainly the Government, and public figures who are affected by this practice of deep fakes... to put pressure on Meta and put pressure on the social media platforms."

The founder added that a potential danger of pressuring online firms could include "signal boosting" the fakes, when "maybe they just don't want eyeballs on it".

Beard continued: "It maybe highlights the fact their images can be ripped and used so easily.

"I can see why they're hesitant, but give it a year and it may be unavoidable... You can see them becoming a target.

"You can see that currently it's not quite big enough for them to do anything, but I think everyone in the public image space needs to be putting pressure on Meta and the platforms about this problem in general."

"If this is left undealt with by the platforms... They're going to have to do something, because there's only going to be more ads, and they're getting better and more malicious."