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Your new celebrity best friend? It’s just a deepfake trying to con you
AI impostors are charming fans out of fortunes – here’s how TV’s Scam Interceptors catch the criminals |
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| Gwilym Mumford |
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This week’s newsletter is written by Nick Stapleton and Mark Lewis, presenter and producer respectively on BBC’s Scam Interceptors. If you haven’t seen Scam Interceptors, it’s a very entertaining factual series in which Nick and his team of ethical hackers attempt to disrupt scamming attacks on the public as they happen. In the show’s fourth series, now airing daytime on BBC One, one of the scams disrupted involves a worryingly convincing Reese Witherspoon deepfake. So we thought we’d ask Nick and Mark to tell us all about their brush with (fake) celebrity, and share some pointers on how to spot a deepfake before it convinces you to empty your bank account. – Gwilym
Ever wanted to have a deep and meaningful with your favourite Hollywood celebrity? Go on. Who is it? Pedro Pascal? Aubrey Plaza? Jeff Bridges (Nick). Beyoncé (Mark). Well, we’ve got great news for you. Thanks to the seemingly unbothered-by-scams social media giants and the absurdly rapid growth of free-to-use generative AI, you can. The only downside is that they will probably be a version of that celebrity being controlled by a scammer who wants to extort money from you.
Many of you will have seen the story of the woman in France who was scammed out of almost a million euros by someone posing as Brad Pitt. The scammer used AI-generated deepfakes and details from real-life news reports about Pitt’s divorce to trick the woman into thinking she was in a relationship with him. Unfortunately, the widespread availability of AI is an open goal for scammers who want to exploit social media users, many of whom are not au fait with the technology, and are simply trying to interact with their favourite celebs.
You probably tittered at the Brad Pitt story. It’s very easy to sit in judgment of those who have money stolen like this, but far more difficult to admit that the way AI is changing the online world might make us all vulnerable.
In the latest series of our show, we decided to tackle this issue head-on. Donning our digital Donnie Brasco caps, we infiltrated the online groups these scammers were lurking in. What we found was, to continue the Donnie metaphor, a digital mafia. Scammers operating en masse and without hindrance, each one claiming to be an A-list celebrity. Mariah Carey, Jenna Ortega, Keanu Reeves: any A-lister you can think of is probably being criminally impersonated, in plain sight.
Fuelled by a recent viewing of the smash 2001 romcom Legally Blonde, we signed up for the Reese Witherspoon fan club on Facebook. (We must admit, to our shame, we weren’t already members.) Within minutes, we were inundated with messages from multiple accounts, all claiming to be the Real Reese Witherspoon, or Reese Witherspoon Private Account or similar. “Hello Sweetheart”, one greeted us, with a kissy-face emoji.
From there, our friendship developed, and the scammer, claiming to be Reese, pulled out multiple tricks to keep up the ruse. They sent us images of Witherspoon, Photoshopped to include her supposed driving licence, and shared details of their busy filming schedule. Over several weeks, they messaged us at all hours of the day, to the point where we grew to expect her name to pop up on the phone, just as you would your friend or colleague. We even got a little dopamine rush when it did – which is of course exactly what they want.
It’s all a part of their world-building, where they invest significant time and effort into making you believe that maybe, just maybe, this could be the real celebrity. And if you’re willing enough to believe it, it can, and does work. To top off their charade, and to assuage any doubts, we received two videos.
The person in these videos looked like Witherspoon, and sounded like her too. “Hello, I’m real. So if you don’t believe me, I don’t know what to tell you – this is me, have a good day,” she says by way of proof. Of course, she doesn’t though. It’s a deepfake. The friendship led to an intro to Witherspoon’s “manager”, and, well, you’ll have to watch the show to see how they tried to steal our money.
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All of this is unsettling. Not only because it leaves you with a sense of dread about our slow march towards a M3gan-style humanoid dystopia, but also because the videos sit in a weird, uncanny valley. They’re not quite right. There are enough discrepancies to make them look a bit odd to the trained eye. And it’s in these discrepancies that you can short-circuit the scammer’s spell.
Here are a few quick tips on how you can distinguish reality from AI-generated video fakery. This is probably about to become a necessary life-skill for all of us navigating the online world as is maintaining 47 unique passwords.
Active engagement | Broadly speaking, try to engage actively with any vaguely suspicious content. Don’t allow it to wash over you as you probably do with most of what you see online. The phrase “soft eyes” is how you can describe much of our engagement with the online world. Well, harden those peepers. If you want to be sure, observe keenly.
Skin texture | For a video of a person, start by looking at the skin’s texture. If it appears excessively smooth that’s always a good indicator of deepfakery (AI still struggles to generate texture). Granted, that may not be helpful when working out whether you’re looking at AI or just your average Hollywood surgical Ken or Barbie.
Badly dubbed | Watch the mouth closely. Are the mouth shapes what you would expect from someone saying the words coming out? Blinking too – are they blinking too little and staring straight into your soul with shark-like dead eyes?
Listen closely | The human voice can be a great read on whether video or audio has been faked. AI has a hard time with the ups and downs of our emotional range, so AI-generated voices tend to lack movement in tone. They will probably be flat, a recreation of the voice of the individual concerned, but only at one level.
It is very important to add that all of the above is correct as of today, but as the technology evolves, it will get better at this. A lot better. Soon enough, being able to tell real from fake online is going to become one of our most vital skills, enabling us to avoid all kinds of emotional and mental manipulation. The creators of AI have no intention of stopping until they hit AGI (artificial general intelligence), essentially a human brain in computer form. It won’t need prompts. Google’s owner, Alphabet, has recently dropped its promise to not use AI for developing weapons and surveillance tools. Cool.
While talking to ChatGPT about the ethics of AI the other day, in its usual chilled-out California surfer dude style, it described itself to us as a “hoodie-wearing superweapon”. Deepfake Reese might be the thin end of the wedge.
Scam Interceptors season 4 is on BBC One every weekday at 2pm. The full series is available on iPlayer now
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Take Five |
Each week we run down the five essential pieces of pop culture we’re watching, reading and listening to |
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FILM – Thunderbolts*
Are we really recommending a Marvel movie here? Tentatively, yes. A collaboration with A24, Thunderbolts*, reviewers are suggesting, might be the first superhero film worth its salt in some time, thanks to a lack of dependence of clunking CGI and instead a focus on – gasp! – characterisation. Florence Pugh leads a rabble of supervillains who decide to step up and save the day in the absence of the Avengers. Their enemy? A genetically engineered CIA experiment with a depressive streak, who traps victims inside their darkest thoughts. “Marvel does mental health” might sound like a risky prospect, but more reassuring is that it has been written and directed by the team behind Netflix’s terrific series Beef. Out now.
Want more? Parthenope is another luscious-looking coming-of-age film from Paolo Sorrentino, this time set between his muse-city of Naples and the isle of Capri. Plus, here are seven more films to watch at home. |
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ALBUM – Car Seat Headrest: The Scholars
Will Toledo, the driving force behind Virginia outfit Car Seat Headrest, spent the early years of his career amassing a huge amount of scene goodwill with a series of driving indie albums, culminating in 2016’s excellent Teens of Denial. He then burned through that capital with 2020’s ambitious but divisive Making a Door Less Open, which swapped soaring melodies for frosty electronics and saw Toledo introduce a gas-mask-wearing alter ego named Trait. So where next? On The Scholars he retains the ambitiousness – it’s a rock opera about an imagined university where the students are suffering a crisis of faith, and about half the songs are 10 minutes-plus – but has reinstated the anthemics on tracks like The Catastrophe. The result is a real return to form. Out now.
Want more? No-wave-evoking dance-rockers Model/Actriz’s new album Pirouette is rightly getting raved about – its lead single Cinderella is one of the tracks of the year so far in my book. And the extremely fun Canadian pop-punk band PUP have a new album out too: Who Will Look After the Dogs? For the rest of our music reviews, click here. |
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PODCAST – Proxy with Yowei Shaw
When her podcast, the much-loved pop-science series Invisibilia, was cancelled by NPR in 2023, Yowei Shaw did what any good podder would, and made some content out of it. The first episodes of her independently produced show Proxy looked at the impact of being laid off, by finding someone with experience of the situation to chat to. That morphed into a show where Shaw spoke to “proxies” with knowledge about a subject she wanted to know more about, from political polarisation to the art of crying in public. Now Proxy has been picked up by another audio giant, Radiotopia (hopefully this time there’s a happier ending). The first episode of this new era was released last week, with Shaw searching for a proxy who could stand in for a male listener’s ex-girlfriend, who realised she wasn’t straight.
Want more? In the podcast Me and My Mixtape hosts Matt Hughes and Mark Woodyatt build a 10-track mixtape on a single theme, from one-hit wonders to 80s movies. Plus, here’s what to listen to this week. |
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BOOK – Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
In his 2019 prose-poem, Ness, co-written with Stanley Donwood, Robert Macfarlane explored the idea of landscapes being alive, with their own powers and rights. Now, in a new nonfiction title, he is asking whether rivers, too, are “alive” and argues convincingly that we should pay more attention to what they need, and how they can be protected. “Macfarlane’s book is timely. Rivers are in crisis worldwide. They have been dammed, poisoned, reduced to servitude, erased from the map”, wrote Guardian reviewer Blake Morrison. “‘Generational amnesia’ means that young people don’t know what clean rivers are. Macfarlane wants them to revive – and to remind us of the interconnectedness of the human and natural world.”
Want more? Jane Gardam, acclaimed author of books for adults and children, died aged 96 this week. In honour of her rich and varied career, why not pick up one of her novels? Her most famous, Old Filth, a tragicomedy about a retired judge grieving his wife, is a good place to start. For more of the Guardian’s books coverage, click here. |
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TV – The Four Seasons
For those fond of Tina Fey’s frenetic, acid-tipped sitcoms (30 Rock, Kimmy Schmidt, the underrated and now sadly cancelled Girls5eva), her new Netflix show – a remake of Alan Alda’s 1981 film about the changing fortunes of three middle-aged couples – might seem a departure. The farce has been dialled down, replaced by gentle, slightly gag-light comedy-drama, and there’s a whiff of Nancy Meyers about the look of the thing. But get past that jarring vibe shift and there’s much to enjoy here: it ambles along amiably but Fey remembers to spike the camomile tea with a dash of vinegar. And the cast is the sort of spectacular assemblage only a deep-pocketed streamer could manage: joining Fey are Steve Carell, Colman Domingo and Will Forte, plus a host of likable character actors.
Want more? The first episode of ITV’s The Assembly is a hoot, as a neurodivergent and learning-disabled panel quiz Danny Dyer on meditation, nepo babies and his divorce. Watch out for more shows to stream this week. |
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Read On |
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The Tate Modern turns 25 this month: here’s the story behind some of its greatest and most notorious exhibits and moments, told by those who created, commissioned and received much blowback from them. |
With ratings hitting new lows and the current Time Lord rumoured to be exiting, is Doctor Who doomed, asks Martin Belam. |
The Guardian has a new column, My cultural awakening, where our readers and writers share the cultural moments that prompted them to upend their lives. First up, how a Sex and the City scene made one reader end their loveless relationship. |
Right at the other end of the relationship scale, I enjoyed this story (and video) of a couple getting married in a Cannibal Corpse mosh pit. |
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You be the Guide |
Last week we asked for the actor whose films you’ll always watch. Here are a few of the stars you’ll never skip:
“Tilda Swinton for me. I was hooked after Orlando in 1992, and We Need to Talk About Kevin really should have been Oscar-nominated. A few Coen brothers films ticked more boxes, and the 2020 short The Human Voice for Almodóvar hit the spot. Throw in a TV appearance in What We Do in the Shadows, and what’s not to like?” – David McCutcheon
“For years, Jeff Bridges has been my cast-iron guarantee of quality (see his recent move to The Old Man). My newest top-quality actor is Stephen Graham. Never puts a foot wrong.” – Rob Mansfield
“The actor whose films I’ll always make a point to watch is Michael Fassbender. It started in 2011 with Shame, and since then, I’ve watched everything he’s been in, regardless of the film’s overall quality (and yes, there have been a couple of duds). On a similar note, George Clooney had an incredible run from 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck through to 2011’s The Ides of March. During that stretch, I would watch almost anything he appeared in.” – Ricardo Olivera
“Andrew Scott could be standing perfectly still staring into space and I’d watch him do it. Ditto Frances McDormand. Ditto Kieran Culkin (although he never seems to stand still).” – Sharon Eckman
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