An impressive bit of sleuthing, and the first real-world mass-scale scam enabled by AI that I'm aware of. (The last story I recall is a company executive getting scammed by deepfakes people on Zoom calls, but the scale here is impressive.)
There's another real-world mass-scale scam that I'm aware of, but I've only heard about it through word of mouth and haven't wanted to write about it until confirming with first-party sources. I'll give you a hint through: it involves defrauding universities.
OMG, I saw these this morning as well, but I had the audio off, and I was there to see rockets, not Musk talking, so in seconds I figured I'd missed the launch, and immediately started looking for a replay of it from elsewhere.
Never thought for a second that I had opened a totally fake video.
The wild thing is I'm sure YouTube is actively promoting these to people in their feeds! It's hard to replicate and take a screenshot, but I think the algorithm is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
I saw a fake Elon pitching the same cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme a couple of weeks ago. When I saw it, it was attached to a different type of fake Elon-related announcement video, similar to real announcements he’s done in the past. After reading your article, it seems like these scams are timed with other Elon-related events. The video looked very convincing, especially with "Elon" claiming he’d double my Bitcoin (if I had any).
A few thoughts crossed my mind:
"Oh, Elon... doing something crazy like buying Twitter out of the blue."
"Wait... he’s speaking unusually smoothly. Has he improved his speaking skills?"
"I don’t own any cryptocurrency, so how can I take advantage of this?"
"Even if this is really Elon, it seems too good to be true and probably won't pan out as claimed."
I also noticed the supposedly "live" video kept repeating itself, which made me even more suspicious. I scanned the QR code but didn’t go any further. I decided it wasn't worth the risk and moved on, though I wondered if I was missing out on a rare opportunity.
I’m very pleased to read your article confirming that it was just a scam.
Great catch on a number of these things! I didn't mention the looping aspect of the video, but that was another big red flag. I think what helped me a lot (besides knowing what to look for when it comes to deepfakes) was having seen a lot of similarly-shaped crypto scams in the past.
You know, a lot of folks will sort of poo-poo the idea of a coming singularity, but one of the very clear approaching signs is that we can't keep up with all the tech innovation. I think we are already headed in that direction - folks like you and Dan Nest spend lots of time on this stuff to tell folks like me everything that's going on, but even you guys are having a hard time keeping up... and the pace of change is only going to get faster this decade. How much faster? I really don't know, but since we've gone from like quarterly updates to monthly to weekly already, it seems like things are following a pretty predictable script.
FWIW, I don't think that necessarily has to mean AGI or anything like that, but instead that change will be impossible for the non-augmented to keep up with. That's certainly where we are headed today.
I found a bunch of these when searching for the flight 5 live feed. At first it me a few seconds to realize they were fake. I also realized that many other people wouldn't. Made me angry. Almost missed the catch attempt trying to find an actual real feed. :(
I watched the starship launch last night on the 13/10 and clicked on space x channel that had the most viewer only to see Elon in the middle of a presentation. I assumed that they would cut to the launch in a few minutes, they never did. After 5 minutes i realised that this was wrong, why was Elon trying to rip me off and ask me to send him bit coin. it was a disgusting lie, created to deceive and trick you to send them money. I think the min value was $20000 which later became $2000, I don't understand how they were allowed to post as what appears to be the official Space X channel. I hope they get some terrible illness and die in agony, they are scum and need to be locked up in isolation for there crimes, never to be realised
OK…a lot of people are seeing the evidence of fraudulently generated AI videos of Elon Musk and SpaceX, but does anybody have any clue who the actual scammer is?
An impressive bit of sleuthing, and the first real-world mass-scale scam enabled by AI that I'm aware of. (The last story I recall is a company executive getting scammed by deepfakes people on Zoom calls, but the scale here is impressive.)
There's another real-world mass-scale scam that I'm aware of, but I've only heard about it through word of mouth and haven't wanted to write about it until confirming with first-party sources. I'll give you a hint through: it involves defrauding universities.
Now I'm sufficiently intrigued. Would love to hear more when you're able to share.
OMG, I saw these this morning as well, but I had the audio off, and I was there to see rockets, not Musk talking, so in seconds I figured I'd missed the launch, and immediately started looking for a replay of it from elsewhere.
Never thought for a second that I had opened a totally fake video.
The wild thing is I'm sure YouTube is actively promoting these to people in their feeds! It's hard to replicate and take a screenshot, but I think the algorithm is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
I saw a fake Elon pitching the same cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme a couple of weeks ago. When I saw it, it was attached to a different type of fake Elon-related announcement video, similar to real announcements he’s done in the past. After reading your article, it seems like these scams are timed with other Elon-related events. The video looked very convincing, especially with "Elon" claiming he’d double my Bitcoin (if I had any).
A few thoughts crossed my mind:
"Oh, Elon... doing something crazy like buying Twitter out of the blue."
"Wait... he’s speaking unusually smoothly. Has he improved his speaking skills?"
"I don’t own any cryptocurrency, so how can I take advantage of this?"
"Even if this is really Elon, it seems too good to be true and probably won't pan out as claimed."
I also noticed the supposedly "live" video kept repeating itself, which made me even more suspicious. I scanned the QR code but didn’t go any further. I decided it wasn't worth the risk and moved on, though I wondered if I was missing out on a rare opportunity.
I’m very pleased to read your article confirming that it was just a scam.
Great catch on a number of these things! I didn't mention the looping aspect of the video, but that was another big red flag. I think what helped me a lot (besides knowing what to look for when it comes to deepfakes) was having seen a lot of similarly-shaped crypto scams in the past.
We are entering a new era.
I'm ready to start living in "precedented" times again, tbh.
You know, a lot of folks will sort of poo-poo the idea of a coming singularity, but one of the very clear approaching signs is that we can't keep up with all the tech innovation. I think we are already headed in that direction - folks like you and Dan Nest spend lots of time on this stuff to tell folks like me everything that's going on, but even you guys are having a hard time keeping up... and the pace of change is only going to get faster this decade. How much faster? I really don't know, but since we've gone from like quarterly updates to monthly to weekly already, it seems like things are following a pretty predictable script.
FWIW, I don't think that necessarily has to mean AGI or anything like that, but instead that change will be impossible for the non-augmented to keep up with. That's certainly where we are headed today.
I found a bunch of these when searching for the flight 5 live feed. At first it me a few seconds to realize they were fake. I also realized that many other people wouldn't. Made me angry. Almost missed the catch attempt trying to find an actual real feed. :(
I watched the starship launch last night on the 13/10 and clicked on space x channel that had the most viewer only to see Elon in the middle of a presentation. I assumed that they would cut to the launch in a few minutes, they never did. After 5 minutes i realised that this was wrong, why was Elon trying to rip me off and ask me to send him bit coin. it was a disgusting lie, created to deceive and trick you to send them money. I think the min value was $20000 which later became $2000, I don't understand how they were allowed to post as what appears to be the official Space X channel. I hope they get some terrible illness and die in agony, they are scum and need to be locked up in isolation for there crimes, never to be realised
OK…a lot of people are seeing the evidence of fraudulently generated AI videos of Elon Musk and SpaceX, but does anybody have any clue who the actual scammer is?
I’m interested in who it is..seriously!
Tnx for sharing this. Pretty unsettling to imagine where these sort of things might lead to.