Martin Lewis has issued a warning to his followers after discovering a ‘frightening’ deepfake scam of himself, urging people to invest their own money into something.
It’s a sad sign of our times that a man who made his name attempting to help people with their money is being used to steal stuff from people, but we can expect to see more and more of this kind of thing as the technology advances.
Basically, someone has used a deepfaking technology to use Lewis’ likeness to encourage people to invest their money into something set up and endorsed by Elon Musk.
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Of course, it’s not real and it’s a total scam, but it looks legit so you could easily see why someone might fall for it.
The MoneySavingExpert founder has called for the authorities to ‘step up’ their efforts to keep things like this off social media, claiming that people will have their money taken from them and ‘lives will be ruined’.
Posting on Twitter, Lewis shared the terrifyingly realistic version of himself, writing: “This is a scam by criminals trying to steal money.
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“This is frightening, it’s the first deep fake video scam I’ve seen with me in it.
“Govt & regulators must step up to stop big tech publishing such dangerous fakes.
“People’ll lose money and it’ll ruin lives.”
In the AI-generated clip, Lewis – or his digital scam avatar – can be seen backing an investment scheme that is purportedly set up by SpaceX and Tesla head honcho Musk.
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Of course, he has nothing to do with it, either.
Lewis can be seen saying: “Elon Musk presented his project in which he has already invested more than $3 billion.
“Musk’s new project opens up great investment opportunities for British citizens.
“No project has ever given such opportunities to residents of the country.”
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Of course – once again – you shouldn’t believe that.
Lewis, who hosts his own money show on ITV as well as having founded MoneySavingExpert – has previously taken legal action against Facebook for scam adverts using his likeness, but this is the first time he’s seen a sophisticated deepfake like this one.
After that action, Facebook agreed to create a reporting tool for such adverts and donated a large sum to Citizens Advice for a project to raise awareness of scams.
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Lewis has been a long-time advocate for action against scammers, even becoming emotional when describing one case before a parliamentary committee back in 2021.
He told of how a woman with cancer had her life ‘destroyed’ because of these criminals.
Discussing that particular case, he said: “She said ‘It’s Martin sponsoring it, it must be all right’,
“It was a scam, and she lost thousands.
“She lost £15,000 trying to get back the money initially lost.”
Featured Image Credit: MoneySavingExpert.com / Twitter / @t0uchscreenguruTopics: Martin Lewis, Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Money, Crime