Michael Mosley is among a number of TV doctors victim to “deepfakes” of themselves circulating on social media to sell scam products, an investigation has revealed.
The likenesses of trusted names including Hilary Jones, Michael Mosley and Rangan Chatterjee are being used to promote products claiming to fix high blood pressure and diabetes, and to sell hemp gummies, according to the British Medical Journal.
Deepfakes are created by using AI to map a digital likeness of a real person on to a video of a body that isn’t theirs.
It’s hard to say exactly how convincing these fabricated videos are – but one recent study suggests up to half of all people shown deepfakes talking about scientific subjects cannot distinguish them from authentic videos.
A video of Dr Hilary Jones posted on Facebook appeared to show him promoting a “cure” for high blood pressure on the Lorraine programme – but it wasn’t him.
Dr Jones told the BMJ that wasn’t the only product being promoted using his name, with his likeness also attached to so-called diabetes treatments and a slew of hemp gummies.
In one fake video, Dr Michael Mosley, who died last month, is shown appearing to talk about a diabetes “cure” that does away with the need for insulin injections.
The BMJ did not specify how many videos it found in its investigation.
For Dr Jones, the problem is so bad he now employs a social media specialist to trawl the internet for deepfake videos that misrepresent his views and tries to take them down.
But it is hard to keep on top of.
“They just pop up the next day under a different name,” he said.
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Henry Ajder, an expert on deepfake technology, said: “The rapid democratisation of accessible AI tools for voice cloning and avatar generation has transformed the fraud and impersonation landscape.”
Spotting deepfakes can be tricky as the technology has improved, he added.
“It’s difficult to quantify how effective this new form of deepfake fraud is, but the growing volume of videos now circulating would suggest bad actors are having some success.”
Many of the videos were found on Facebook and Instagram, which is owned by Meta. A spokesperson told the BMJ it will investigate the videos highlighted in the report.
“We don’t permit content that intentionally deceives or seeks to defraud others, and we’re constantly working to improve detection and enforcement,” the spokesperson said.
“We encourage anyone who sees content that might violate our policies to report it so we can investigate and take action.”
