In a broadcast that ran for five hours on YouTube today, a crypto currency scam was perpetrated using a deepfake video of Elon Musk. Such fake broadcasts feature an AI-generated voice of Musk directing viewers to deposit cryptocurrency on a fake website.
Deepfake videos of Elon Musk and crypto scams on the rise
A YouTube broadcast that lasted for five hours today was used to commit cryptocurrency fraud using Elon Musk’s deepfake. The video featured a clip of Musk masquerading as a live stream from a Tesla event and played a message loop with an AI-generated voice telling viewers to deposit bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin. The message promised double the amount of cryptocurrency deposited would be returned.
At one point, more than 30,000 viewers were seen joining the stream (although it is possible that these numbers were inflated by bots), which pushed it to the top of YouTube’s Live Now recommendations. The @elon.teslastream account pretending to be Tesla carried an Official Artist Channel verification badge, so we may be talking about an account hack. Both the video and the channel were later removed.
Over the last few months these Elon Musk deepfake scams have increased, each time using an account impersonating one of Musk’s companies. This post was titled “Tesla’s masterpiece: The Tesla that will change the car industry forever”.
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In early June, during the Starship launch, we saw similar scams run by 35 accounts claiming to be SpaceX. In April, scammers tried to capitalize on the eclipse hype using the same tactic.
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 challenge for social media platforms. You need to be wary of such scams and always seek information from official sources. YouTube and other platforms should take stricter measures to detect and block such content, but that’s another matter.
