Tom Hanks, MrBeast and other celebrities warn over AI deep fake scams

Instances of celebrities and public figures continue to surface regarding AI deep fakes with their likeness circulating around the web promoting scams or products.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a major talking point in Hollywood throughout the year and continues to be so as multiple celebrities have come forth denouncing the use of the likeness in AI deep fakes. 

Actor Tom Hanks, YouTube personality known as Mr. Beast and American broadcast journalist Gayle King have all recently tried to put an end to deep fakes of themselves.

Hanks was the first of the three to identify the AI deep fake of himself after he posted a screenshot of the video on his Instagram page on Oct. 1 saying “beware” and that he had nothing to do with it.

The AI version of Hanks was created to promote what he called, “some dental plan.”

A day later, on Oct 2. American broadcast journalist and television personality Gayle King posted a similar video on her Instagram. An AI deep fake of her surfaced which used a video she recently made to promote her radio show. 

The fake was also promoting a product, which the journalist said she neither knew of nor endorsed. She wrote, “…they’ve manipulated my voice and video to make it seem like I’m promoting it,” and warned her community “not to be fooled.”

King received many comments in her support and voicing concerns over the “scariness” of these AI deep fakes.

Then, on Oct. 3, YouTube personality James Donaldson known as MrBeast took to social media platform X to denounce an AI-generated deep fake of himself. In this instance, MrBeast is seen promoting a scam for winning an iPhone 15 pro. 

The media personality’s posts made a plea to social media platforms saying: “Are social media platforms ready to handle the rise of AI deep fakes? This is a serious problem.”

Lots of people are getting this deepfake scam ad of me… are social media platforms ready to handle the rise of AI deepfakes? This is a serious problem pic.twitter.com/llkhxswQSw

— MrBeast (@MrBeast) October 3, 2023

One X user commented on MrBeast’s post saying they had received the ad on their TikTok, while another also raised concerns over the widespread emergence of AI deep fakes. 

While there has been no official legislation created or implemented regarding AI deep fakes, in the United States lawmakers are considering regulating political deep fakes in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election.

Related: AI deepfakes are getting better at spoofing KYC verification — Binance exec

However, Hollywood entertainment studios and actors have been negotiating the use of AI in the future of productions. SAG-AFTRA members have included AI as an item as a part of their current strike, which has been ongoing since the summer. 

The proposal from studios suggested that background performers should be scanned, receiving only a single day’s worth of pay, and then hand over complete ownership of the scan, image and likeness to the companies.

While the Writer’s Guild strike has finally come to an end, including negotiated terms of AI use in terms of written material in the entertainment industry, the aforementioned strike has yet to come to any conclusions.

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