How amazing is it that Canadian celebrities like TV chef Mary Berg, crooner Michael Bublé, comedian Rick Mercer and hockey megastar Sidney Crosby are finally revealing their secrets to financial success? That is, until the Bank of Canada tried to stop them.
None of that is true, of course, but it was the figurative bag of magic beans apparent scammers on social media tried to sell to people, enticing users to click on sensational posts — Berg under arrest, Bublé being dragged away — and leading them to what looks like, at first glance, a legitimate news story on CTV News’s website.
If you’re further intrigued by what appears to be an AI-generated article, you’ll have ample opportunity to click on the many links — about 225 on a single page — that direct you to sign up and hand over your first investment of $350, which will purportedly increase more than 10-fold in just seven days.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
How amazing is it that Canadian celebrities like TV chef Mary Berg, crooner Michael Bublé, comedian Rick Mercer and hockey megastar Sidney Crosby are finally revealing their secrets to financial success?
If you’re further intrigued by what appears to be an AI-generated article, you’ll have ample opportunity to click on the many links — about 225 on a single page — that direct you to sign up and hand over your first investment of $350, which will purportedly increase more than 10-fold in just seven days.
These were just the latest in a batch of deepfake ads, articles and videos exploiting the names, images, footage and even voices of prominent Canadians to promote investment or cryptocurrency schemes.
Financial scams and schemes appropriating the likenesses of famous people are nothing new, but the use of rapidly-advancing generative-AI technology puts “a new twist on a pretty old concept,” said lawyer Molly Reynolds, a partner at Torys LLP in Toronto.
Reynolds pointed to a recent class-action lawsuit against Meta over “Sponsored Stories” advertisements on Facebook, between 2011 and 2014, that generated endorsements using names and profile photos of users to promote products without their consent.
Much of the research that has been published on artificial intelligence includes source code that is openly accessible, she explained, meaning anyone with the know-how can create their own program without any sort of traceable markers.
The original article contains 1,120 words, the summary contains 227 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!