‘Yikes!’ Elon Musk warns users against latest deepfake crypto scam

Tesla CEO Elon Musk distanced himself from yet one more fabricated video selling a cryptocurrency scam.

Initially shared on Twitter, the video in query was a deepfake of Musk purportedly selling a cryptocurrency platform boasting 30% returns on crypto deposits. Scammers made use of authentic footage from a TED Discuss that includes Musk and curator Chris Anderson at a TED convention in Vancouver in April this 12 months.

The tweet and video caught the eye of Musk, himself, who has been more and more energetic since his transfer to accumulate the social media platform for an estimated $44 billion. The Tesla CEO and SpaceEx founder replied to the video in his signature comical fashion:

Yikes. Def not me.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 25, 2022

Musk’s world renown as a expertise pioneer has made him a selection goal for scammers seeking to reap the benefits of unwitting social media users and buyers. The not-so-tech-savvy users are liable to being duped by scams selling unrealistic returns on funding.

Cryptocurrency scams of this nature have been rife in 2020 and 2021, with the USA Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) releasing a report that estimated that over $80 million price of cryptocurrency was stolen from unsuspecting victims over a six month interval.

Given Musk’s affinity for the cryptocurrency house and his pro-Dogecoin slant, fraudulent YouTube stay streams grew to become a weapon of selection. Musk’s now-famous look on the American tv present Saturday Evening Reside proved to be a money cow for scammers, with the FTC zooming in on scam addresses that had acquired about 9.7 million Dogecoin price $5 million in Could final 12 months.

Associated: Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44B — crypto trade reacts

Musk’s transfer to purchase Twitter has include guarantees to advertise free speech on the platform, whereas the Tesla CEO additionally vowed to cull an alarming variety of spam and scam bots which have fleeced users of tens of millions lately in his Ted discuss look earlier this 12 months :

“A prime precedence I might have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies which can be on Twitter. They make the product a lot worse. If I had a Dogecoin for each crypto scam I noticed, we might have 100 billion Dogecoin.”

As Cointelegraph beforehand explored, deepfake movies have been prevalent for the reason that time period was coined in 2017. Making use of synthetic intelligence and computer-generated photos, video and audio, creators look to govern, deceive or scam viewers with media that’s typically so sensible it is onerous to discern fact from fiction.