Premier Scott Moe’s face is a frequent sight on social media, but recently his likeness has been reported on dubious video ads for cryptocurrency schemes that he’s never endorsed.
The videos take Moe’s voice and likeness, and use AI to produce a convincing video of him speaking.
This is not the first time the premier’s image has been used to advance fraudulent businesses. In March, Moe acknowledged similar schemes, which were using his face to sell cryptocurrency.
On Aug. 1 Moe spoke out forcefully against the videos, and denied any affiliation with the websites mentioned in them.
“I want to put it out there without question that when you see myself and quite likely any politician out there endorsing specific cryptocurrencies or things of that nature, that it likely and most certainly is a deepfake,” he said.
“You should just bypass it and move along. They’re only there to hurt you.”
The Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority of Saskatchewan (FCAA) issued a warning as well, advising people to not send money to entities that are not registered in the province.
Under the 1988 Securities Act, individuals and companies need to be registered with the FCAA in order to trade or sell securities and other financial products in Saskatchewan. The FCAA has set up a website, aretheyregistered.ca, to allow people to easily check the status of someone offering an investment.
“Do not deal with any unregistered entities,” said FCAA Securities Division Executive Director Dean Murrison. “Do not make investment decisions based on public figure endorsements.”
According to the FCAA, Scammers are creating fraudulent news and social media articles, commonly using deepfakes and other methods to imitate real media sources, including the CBC.
Scammers are turning to deep fakes of trusted public figures to take your money through bogus online ads. The National’s Ian Hanomansing is among them. He found out what the law says and what social media companies are doing about it.
Beyond verifying the investment entity, the FCAA encourages people to always seek a second opinion or seek professional advice about investments they see online. They should also never make an investment decision based on an endorsement from a notable figure.
A global effort to fight deepfakes
The rapid development of artificial intelligence tools has given fraudsters unprecedented new methods to develop fake videos of celebrities and politicians endorsing their products.
Countries around the world are grappling with how to stay ahead of these scams. Denmark is considering a law that will allow people to copyright their digital likeness, allowing them to pursue civil cases if their likeness is used without their consent.
Some AI observers are skeptical of that solution. Henry Ajder, an expert on deepfakes, says the copyright classification would compel people to proactively go after AI abusers, and not be able to rely on the government to police.
“Copyright is treated as a civil right, not necessarily treated as criminal. So violating copyright is not something that the state is necessarily going to prosecute a perpetrator for,” he said. “This is something that you would be expected to bring a civil case to.”
Nelson Godfrey, an intellectual property lawyer based in Vancouver, says its unlikely that Canada would follow the Danish route.
“Trying to characterize someone’s likeness as copyright is a bit of an odd fit. So to make it work within existing copyright legislation, certainly you’d need to figure out how ownership works, how authorship works, if there would be joint authorship or co-ownership of works,” he said. “There’s real complications when it comes to those things.”
Unlike the European Union, Canada does not have AI-specific laws, though it does have digital safety laws and a new Minister for Artificial Intelligence.
The Ministry of Justice says it’s working on criminalizing nonconsensual sexual deep fakes, which Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to while he was campaigning before the most recent federal election.
