this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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TikTok ran a deepfake ad of an AI MrBeast hawking iPhones for $2 — and it's the 'tip of the iceberg'::As AI spreads, it brings new challenges for influencers like MrBeast and platforms like TikTok aiming to police unauthorized advertising.

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[–] [email protected] 213 points 1 year ago (24 children)

Everyone with a brain has been saying this would happen for the last decade, and yet there was no legislation put in place to target this behavior

Why does every law need to be reactionary? Why can't we see a situation developing and get ahead of it by legislating the very obvious things it can be used for?

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

How about a real answer:

All but a few of our legislators have any idea how technology/Internet works. Anything about the Internet that is obvious to the crowd on lemmy will probably never cross the radar of a geriatric legislator who never needs to even write their own emails bc an aide will do it

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So, the first reason is that the law likely already covers most cases where someone is using deepfakes. Using it to sell a product? Fraud. Using it to scam someone? Fraud. Using it to make the person say something they didn’t? Likely falls into libel.

The second reason is that the current legislation doesn’t even understand how the internet works, is likely amazed by the fact that cell phones exist without the use of magic, and half of them likely have dementia. Good luck getting them to even properly understand the problem, never mind come up with a solution that isn’t terrible.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The problem is that realistically this kind of tort law is hilariously difficult to enforce.

Like, 25 years ago we were pirating like mad, and it was illegal! But enforcing it meant suing individual people for piracy, so it was unenforceable.

Then the DMCA was introduced, which defined how platforms were responsible for policing IP crime. Now every platform heavily automates copyright enforcement.

Because there, it was big moneybags who were being harmed.

But somebody trying to empty out everybody's Gramma's chequing account with fraud? Nope, no convenient platform enforcement system for that.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Huh TIL that the average age of the Senate and the House has steadily increased over time: https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/118th-congress-age-third-oldest-1789-rcna64117

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 1 year ago

Simpsons called it:

[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh boy. This is all moving very quickly. People already fall for simple SMS scams, I can only imagine just how many more will be falling victim to this trash in months/years to come.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People have already been falling for scams that "Elon Musk" was promoting. Naturally I'm talking about these crypto schemes run by scammers on YouTube using a deepfake of Musk. It's been happening for about two years now.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Bill Gates has been giving away his fortune to some lucky email recipients every year now since the days when you had to pay for the internet by the hour.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Just imagine fans getting a facetime call from a Taylor Swift, explaining they won half-price tickets to an exlusive fan event. Then “Taylor” has to drop out to make the other calls, but will leave them a link for the purchase - only valid for 15 minutes, as of course many others are waiting for this opportunity.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

This is the entire basis of using an adblocker like ublock origin. It is purely defensive. You don't know what an advertising (malvertising) network will deliver, and neither does the website you're on (Tiktok, Google, Yahoo, eBay, etc etc etc). With generative AI and video ads and the lack of content checking on the advertising network this will just get worse and worse. I mean, why spend money on preventing this? The targeted ads and user data collection is where the money's at, baby!

Related note, installing uBO on my dad's PC some 8 years ago was far more effective than any kind of virus scanner or whatever. Allowing commerce on the Internet was a mistake. That's the root of all this bullshit, anyway.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fuck ads in general. I don't care if they are legitimate or not I don't want to be mentally assaulted every time I try to browse a website.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Allowing commerce ~~on the Internet~~ was a mistake. That’s the root of all this bullshit, anyway.

That's more accurate.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Bro I still don't know who MrBeast is.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Currently largest and most successful YouTuber on the platform (by a wide margin), started out by doing challenge videos about himself (24h in ice, that kinda stuff) that he'd invite friends to as the goody sidekicks causing mischief and making his challenges a little harder/more interesting.

These days, his stuff has transformed into a media powerhouse, all of it is still kinda falling into a challenge category. Now with far higher stakes and involving other people in competitions against each other - think "kids vs adults - group with most people still in the game after 5 days wins $500k" - where several days (sometimes months) of filming all gets cut down to one 10-20 minute long video.

There's also just "look at this thing" videos like "$1 to $10,000,00 car" where him and his friends check out increasingly expensive cars until they eventually get a whole bridge cordoned off to drive in the most expensive car in the world.

He does some philanthropy, like his "plant 10 million trees" campaign and makes money through sponsorship deals and advertising his own brands - they're currently running their own line of (fair trade?) chocolate bars that are available (in most places?) in the US, which kids will buy because of the brand recognition, leaving them with a ton of profits.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

I believe he is a Youtuber. That's as far as I've gotten.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

If memory serves (being knowledge I gleaned from a podcast). He's a YouTuber that has carved out a popular niche in philanthropy of sorts. All for views of course, but some philanthropy none the less. Very popular I think with, I want to say Gen Alpha aged kids. A lot of people have imitated the content style in the last few years. So I guess there is instant brand recognition and trust there for a lot of people.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The more I hear about AI-generated content and other crap that is posted online these days, I wonder if I should just start reading books instead, maybe even learn to play on a musical instrument and leave virtual world altogether.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Plagiarized books entirely written by an AI are nor far-fetched. Get ready for a shitty reality.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

There is already books written entirely by AI too, AI is litterly getting everywhere

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Butlerian jihad sounds like a good idea rn

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Yeah but then I need to hire a mentat to keep my shit straight

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

No.

We need the AIs to make the Men of Gold so we can compete with the murder orgy space elves.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Came to watch a fake mrbeast left dissatisfied. Came back to post a link: https://twitter.com/MrBeast/status/1709046466629554577

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Click blewlowaugh now

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And that is why we need a pixel poisoner but for videos.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m not familiar with the term, and Google shows nothing that makes sense in context. Can you explain the concept?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Here specifically it's a technique to alter images that makes them distorted for the "perception" by generative neural networks and unusable as training data but still recognizable to a human.

The general term is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_machine_learning#Data_poisoning

One example of a tool that does this is https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/ but I have doubts about its imperceptibility

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Yeah I'm at a loss aswell. Is it a way to prove the source of a video?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


TikTok ran an advertisement featuring an AI-generated deepfake version of MrBeast claiming to give out iPhone 15s for $2 as part of a 10,000 phone giveaway.

The sponsored video, which Insider viewed on the app on Monday, looked official as it included MrBeast's logo and a blue check mark next to his name.

Two days ago, Tom Hanks posted a warning to fans about a promotional video hawking a dental plan that featured an unapproved AI version of himself.

"Realism, efficiency, and accessibility or democratization means that now this is essentially in the hands of everyday people," Henry Ajder, an academic researcher and expert in generative AI and deepfakes, told Insider.

Not all AI-generated ad content featuring celebrities is inherently bad, as a recent campaign coordinated between Lionel Messi and Lay's demonstrates.

"If someone releases an AI-generated advert without disclosure, even if it's perfectly benign, I still think that should be labeled and should be positioned to an audience in the way that they can understand," Ajder said.


The original article contains 518 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I read this title last night and thought it was a story about AI making an amalgamation of MrBeast and Stephen Hawking to shill iPhones

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Can Mr Beast sue til tok over this?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, can only DMCA takedowns.

If he can find the creator or publisher, he can sue for misappropriation of name and likeness. It's a privacy tort.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (10 children)

It would be a good time to start a paid online community that has a lengthy vetting process for accuracy and authenticity of all content.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Link to video?

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