Beware of AI-generated Elon Musk videos on YouTube

YouTube faces wave of AI-generated Elon Musk videos promoting crypto scams during eclipse streams.

The recent solar eclipse has captured widespread attention, becoming a hot topic across news platforms, social media, and the internet, thanks to an array of shared articles, posts, and visual content. On YouTube, live streams dedicated to the solar eclipse are attracting massive audiences, with some streams gathering hundreds of thousands of viewers simultaneously.

Yet, amidst this popularity, a wave of deceptive livestreams has emerged. These streams, originating from channels falsely claiming to be SpaceX, feature AI-generated speeches purportedly by Elon Musk.

The hidden agenda behind these fraudulent streams is to deceive viewers into parting with their cryptocurrency. The uncovering of this scheme was first brought to light by Mashable, crediting the iOS developer and research team Mysk for their investigative efforts.

Woow! A verified @YouTube account is impersonating @SpaceX's account and airing a livestream about the solar eclipse. The stream shows a deepfake of Elon Musk asking users to scan a QR code on the screen and deposit cryptocurrencies to have them doubled. 95K users are watching… pic.twitter.com/A0B5XiAfUg

— Mysk