Elon Musk’s deep fake video promoting a scam cryptocurrency trading platform BitVex goes viral
Nickie Louise
Posted On May 25, 2022
In 2020, Samsung unveiled new AI algorithms that make it easy to create moving faces from just a single photo. Since then, fake video has increased in popularity as new AI and machine learning technology now make it easier for everyone to create fake videos aimed at misleading people.
This week, a deep fake video emerged on social media to scam crypto holders and is now doing the rounds on the internet. In the video, Musk is seen promoting a scam cryptocurrency trading platform BitVex that claims to offer 30% returns on crypto deposits. Below is the video shared by Twitter user DogeDesigner.
Responding to the video, Musk said the person in the video is definitely not him. “Yikes. Def not me,” Musk tweeted in response.
Yikes. Def not me.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 25, 2022
According to Bleeping Computer which first reported the video, hoping to trap crypto holders in a ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme, crypto scammers are using deep fake videos of Elon Musk and other well-known crypto advocates to promote a BitVex trading platform scam that steals their deposits.
The scam campaign started earlier this month with threat actors creating or hacking existing YouTube accounts to host deep fake videos of Elon Musk, Cathie Wood, Brad Garlinghouse, Michael Saylor, and Charles Hoskinson. The deep videos are legitimate interviews modified using deep fake technology to use the person’s voice in a script provided by the threat actors.
In the age of fake news, videos can be faked to make people say things they never actually said. Using synthesized content created using artificial intelligence, deep fake videos make even more complicated arguments about what is fake news and what is real.
In the case of Samsung, the company’s deep fake video is even much more sophisticated than the DeepFake audio created three years ago. Machine-learning researchers from Samsung AI Center and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia developed a new DeepFake AI system that allows anyone to create videos, called DeepFake videos, from a single picture using very few input photos, even with a single photo.
