Beware: Deepfakes of Famous Doctors Peddle Scams Online

As the world becomes increasingly reliant on social media, a new and insidious threat has emerged: deepfake videos using the trusted identities of famous doctors to promote dangerous and untested miracle cures for serious health problems. The scammers are getting more sophisticated, deploying the likenesses of popular health experts, including the deceased British TV presenter Michael Mosley. "People do seem to trust these videos," notes Dr. John Cormack, a British doctor who has worked with the British Medical Journal. "A lot of these media doctors have spent a great deal of time creating an image of trustworthiness, so they are believed even when they make incredible claims." Why do these scams work? "They target older audiences, who are more likely to trust these videos," explains AI expert Henry Ajder. The AI videos typically feature doctors who appear regularly on daytime television, making them seem more authentic. Even when these videos are taken down, they can pop up again under a different name, as Dr. Hilary Jones discovered when he hired an investigator to track down deepfakes featuring his likeness.

The quality of deepfake images, audio, and video has improved dramatically thanks to recent advances in AI. As French academic Frederic Jurie explains, "Today we have access to tens of billions of images, and we are able to build algorithms that can model everything that appears in the images and regenerate them. This is what we call generative AI." This means that even the likenesses of controversial figures, such as French researcher Didier Raoult, who has been accused of spreading misleading information about Covid drugs, are being misused. But what's the harm? These scams can risk endangering lives, particularly for those who are vulnerable to misinformation. Dr. Cormack notes that these videos are "a significant threat to public health and the credibility of the medical profession." Moreover, as Ajder points out, "it's a game of cat and mouse. The scammers are getting more sophisticated, and it's hard to keep up." So what's the solution? Rather than relying on technology to find all the fake videos out there, experts suggest focusing on methods that can "guarantee that content has not been altered, such as for messaging, thanks to software that produces digital signatures like a certificate." While this might not completely eliminate the problem, it could help to reduce the number of deepfakes that make it online.

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