“This is not a fake; this is a real giveaway. I personally guarantee it to you,” was a promise made by one of Elon Musk’s deepfake. Fake Musk flooded YouTube as space lovers were on the site to catch the launch of SpaceX’s latest spaceship.
The scamsters timed their streams to coincide with Elon’s stream, which was all about the Starship. The original stream showed that the Starship survived reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere and then splashed into the Indian Ocean as intended.
One YouTube channel garnered 170,000 views, likely bots to make the stream appear legit. Others showed a wide angle of Musk where he (or his deepfake) was seen speaking at an outdoor event. However, some blurred the faces so the viewers could not determine the difference. An AI voice with Musk’s likeness instructed viewers to send Bitcoin tickers down $69,484 or Ether tickers down $3,701 to an address to get double back. The AI voice did a decent job at copying Musk’s vocal disfluencies, such as stutters and pauses — and promised, “this is not a fake, this is a real giveaway. I personally guarantee it to you.”
“You have a chance to see your crypto propel exponentially as our rocket propels toward the stars,” the voice said deadpan, followed by a recording of an applauding crowd.
Nine different Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin wallets from what appeared to be three separate scammers showed a balance of around $34,000. Many transactions in the scammer’s wallets were recorded on June 6th. It is still not clear how many individuals took the bait.
Musk has always favored cryptocurrencies. Therefore, his likeness is used to fool people into scams like the one discussed above.
Security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk found similar fake SpaceX YouTube accounts in April. The agenda of these AI-generated Musks was the same double-your-money scam in conjunction with a solar eclipse seen in North America. Hong Kong’s securities watchdog last month shuttered a firm with deep fake videos of Musk on its site and social media accounts, which claimed he developed the technology for its supposed AI crypto trading service.
