A deepfake of Musk’s voice urged viewers in a live broadcast today to deposit their cryptocurrency on a suspicious site.
A five-hour YouTube live broadcast used a deepfake of Elon Musk to promote a cryptocurrency scam, the latest in a series of similar fraudulent broadcasts. The video, that was subsequently removed, it showed a clip of Musk which seemed to come from an event Teslawith an AI-generated version of his voice instructing viewers to visit a website and deposit bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin to participate in a giveaway. The message, repeated on a loop, promised that the system would “automatically send double the amount of cryptocurrency deposited.”
More than 30,000 spectators they followed the live broadcast at some point (although we can’t rule out that these numbers were inflated by bots), pushing it to the top of YouTube Live Now recommendations. The account posing as Tesla, @elon.teslastream, had the Official Artist Channel verification badge, so we may be dealing with a hacked account. Both the video and the channel were removed after Engadget contacted Google. We will update this article if we receive further information.
![Deepfake of Elon Musk](https://tech.icrewplay.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/deepfake-e1576010828444.jpg)
How Elon Musk’s Deepfake scam worked
These Elon Musk deepfake scams appear to have increased in recent months, each time using an account posing as one of Musk’s companies. This scam was titled “Tesla’s [sic] unveils a masterpiece: The Tesla that will change the car industry forever”. In June, Cointelegraph has reported Similar scams operated by 35 accounts pretending to be SpaceX during the launch of the Starship. Scammers in April attempted to exploit the hype for the eclipse using the same tactic, as reported by Mashable at the time. And there I am There have been numerous reports of fake livestreams Musk recently posted on Reddit.
Crypto scams targeting Musk’s social media followers have been a problem for years, as have scams involving celebrities in general. Just this Friday, 50 Cent was the victim of a hack that used his accounts to carry out a pump-and-dump scheme.
#Elon #Musk #Deepfake #Promote #Crypto #Scams #Youtube