In a five-hour broadcast on YouTube today, a cryptocurrency fraud was committed using Elon Musk’s deepfake video. Such fake broadcasts are performed with an AI-generated voice of Musk directing viewers to deposit cryptocurrency on a fake website.
Crypto scams on the rise with Deepfake videos made against Elon Musk
A YouTube stream lasting five hours today was used to commit cryptocurrency fraud using a deepfake of Elon Musk. The video featured a clip of Musk disguised as a livestream from a Tesla event, playing a message carousel with an AI-generated voice telling viewers to deposit bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin. The message promised that twice the deposited cryptocurrency would be returned.
At one point more than 30,000 viewers were seen tuning in to the broadcast (although it is possible that these numbers are inflated by bots), which pushed the stream to the top of YouTube’s Live Now recommendations. The @elon.teslastream account pretending to be Tesla was carrying an Official Artist Channel verification badge, so we may be talking about an account hack. Both the video and the channel were later removed.
These Elon Musk deepfake scams have increased over the past few months, each time using an account impersonating one of Musk’s companies. The title of this publication was “Tesla’s masterpiece: The Tesla that will change the car industry forever.”
We witnessed similar scams run by 35 accounts claiming to be SpaceX during the Starship launch in early June. In April, scammers tried to capitalize on eclipse excitement using the same tactic.
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Crypto scams have been targeting Musk’s social media followers for years, and scams involving celebrities in general are also common. Just last Friday, 50 Cent’s accounts were hacked.
Elon Musk deepfake videos and similar scams continue to pose a major security problem for social media platforms. You need to be careful against such scams and always get information from official sources. YouTube and other platforms should take stricter measures to detect and block such content, but that is another matter.