UK TV Doctors Deepfaked to Sell Scam Products on Social Media

A recent investigation by The BMJ revealed that scammers are increasingly using deepfakes to impersonate well-known UK television doctors in order to promote bogus health products on social media. Doctors like Hilary Jones, Michael Mosley, and Rangan Chatterjee have all had their likenesses used to advertise products claiming to cure high blood pressure, diabetes, and even sell hemp gummies ().

Deep Fakes: A Growing Threat

Deepfakes are videos created using artificial intelligence (AI) that can realistically superimpose a person's face onto another body. This technology can be very convincing, and studies suggest that up to half of people cannot distinguish deep fakes from real videos, especially those related to scientific topics.

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‘Deepfakes can be indistinguishable from real videos by half of viewers. #deepfake #medindia’

Retired doctor John Cormack collaborated with The BMJ to track the prevalence of deepfaked doctors on social media. He pointed out that creating deep fakes is significantly cheaper than legitimate product development and marketing.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram (owned by Meta) acknowledge the issue and claim to be working on improving detection and removal of such content. However, deepfake creators can easily re-upload content under different accounts, making it a persistent problem.

Why Deepfakes Work?

Deepfakes exploit people's trust in familiar faces. Seeing a respected medical professional endorse a product makes viewers more likely to believe its claims.

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Deepfake technology is constantly evolving, making it difficult to identify them definitively. However, some red flags to watch out for include unnatural body movements or slight inconsistencies between the person's face and the video.

If you encounter a suspicious video, some steps you can take are scrutinizing the content for inconsistencies, leaving a comment expressing your doubts about the video's authenticity, or reporting the video and the account that posted it using the platform's built-in reporting tools.

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Reference:

British TV doctors are being 'deepfaked' to promote health scams - (https://gnews.org/m/2779338)

Source-Medindia

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