Martin Lewis deepfake scam ad

Occurred: July 2023

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A deepfake advert of UK MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis attempted to extort people of money by encouraging them to invest in an Elon Musk-backed project, which the scammer(s) called 'legit' and a 'great investment'.

The 'ad' shows a deepfake of Mr Lewis sitting in his office talking about an investment in 'Quantum AI', which is labelled as Elon Musk’s new project. A picture of Musk accompanies the video. 

'Musk’s new project opens up great investment opportunities for British citizens. No project has ever given such opportunities to residents of the country,' Lewis supposedly said in the video.

Per the BBC, Lewis successfully sued Facebook in 2018 over fake ads in his name, with the social media company making a GBP 3m donation to Citizens Advice. 

Operator: Meta/Facebook; XCorp/Twitter
Developer: 
Country: UK
Sector: Media/entertainment/sports/arts
Purpose: Defraud
Technology: Deepfake - audio, video; Generative adversarial network (GAN); Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning
Issue: Identity theft/impersonation; Mis/disinformation; Safety
Transparency: Governance; Marketing