TikTok ran a deepfake ad of an AI MrBeast hawking iPhones for $2 — and it's the 'tip of the iceberg'
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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
Because no laws will pass without reason.
yet there was no legislation put in place to target this behavior
Why is the solution to every problem outlawing something?
"We need to do something about prostitution. Let's outlaw it!"
"We need to do something about alcohol. Let's outlaw it!"
"We need to do something about drugs. Let's outlaw them!"
"We need to do something about gambling. Let's outlaw it!"
All of it... a bunch of miserable failures, which have put good people in prison and turned our whole country into a goddamn police state. You can't outlaw technology without international treaties to make sure every other country follows suit. That barely works with nuclear weapons, and only because two cities exploded by the bombs and at least a couple decades of being afraid of a nuclear apocalypse.
What the hell do you think is going to happen if we make moves on AI? China takes the lead, does what it wants, and suddenly, it's the far superior superpower. The end.
Hell, how do we know this isn't China propaganda running on China's propaganda platform?
Or you could propose alternative solutions instead of building a weird straw man with sex workers and gin.
Simpsons called it:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That too.
Allowing commerce
on the Internetwas a mistake. That’s the root of all this bullshit, anyway.That's more accurate.
You can't put everything back in Pandora's Box. Right or wrong this is the world we live in. What is lacking is regulation. If left to their own devices we (royal) are shitheels. Unfortunately we (royal) are persistent shitheels which is why when we put in regulations we then strive to rip them out.
Honestly ads aren't that bad when done right. For instance, the yellow pages had ads but they didn't follow you wherever you went. We need ads that people want to look at. If I'm trying to find something g to buy I don't mind looking at an ad. I just don't want it to be everywhere and end up being malious
Although I'd say a good 99% of all ads are terrible, I have yet to find any that are absolutely egregious when visiting sites like FurAffinity. Totally depends on the site and what ad services they chose or are forced into if they have ads. Also where and they are placed.
I never thought of it in security terms but that makes sense. If nothing else, having it installed makes for a better web experience.
Bro I still don't know who MrBeast is.
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.
I believe he is a Youtuber. That's as far as I've gotten.
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.
I was confused because I thought they were talking about the LA Beast. Apparently this is not him.
Nobody fucking cares.
fwiw i read that comment and thought, 'hmm, i don't either' and then i went and watched a few of his videos. they're pretty awesome in a feel-good way. nice to see someone using tons of money to make other people happy and do good things for a change. now i'm subscribed to his channel :)
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.
Keep informed so you don't buy AI-written books. Better know what's going on instead of letting the world happen to you imo.
Butlerian jihad sounds like a good idea rn
Yeah but then I need to hire a mentat to keep my shit straight
No.
We need the AIs to make the Men of Gold so we can compete with the murder orgy space elves.
Came to watch a fake mrbeast left dissatisfied. Came back to post a link: https://twitter.com/MrBeast/status/1709046466629554577
Click blewlowaugh now
And that is why we need a pixel poisoner but for videos.
I’m not familiar with the term, and Google shows nothing that makes sense in context. Can you explain the concept?
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
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!
Can Mr Beast sue til tok over this?
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.
However I think he already said he doesn't care
No, Section 230 protects TikTok as a platform. He would have to sue the ad creator.
Section 230 will absolutely reign here.
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
I mean, that's why I clicked
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.
Haha, paid, good one!
Yes, paid
Guess who wouldn't be in the target demographic?
Moderation is costly if your dedicated to only putting out accurate and truthful content. And people will pay for that accuracy when the media landscape becomes saturated with AI deep fakes.
Link to video?
Paywalled. :(
Ban TikTok already. Can someone tell me why this isn’t a good idea?
So you see this as specifically a tiktok problem and not a tech problem? Do you think it won't/hasn't happened elsewhere, and will be only a tiktok problem? I don't use tiktok, or care about it but I feel like every problem with it is something endemic to social media platforms run by businesses atm.
Maybe it's a bad idea for the government to completely shutdown a private business?
Maybe it's because of the first amendment violations the government silencing a social network would entail.
Maybe it's because we are attempting to be a democracy and have due process available to all entities that operate within the United States?
Just a thought.
This does not end until anonymity on the internet does. As long as nobody signs their content, nobody can be blamed for pooping in the punch bowl.
And that's why I have conspiracy theories about the conspiracy theories about digital ID.
Lol who gives a fuck. If you're a massive influencer being deepfaked then who cares - fuck your brand being damaged, I'd just call it part of the role of having a job like that. If you're a person who buys ads because an influencer is telling you then you're also a moron and you'll be scammed regardless.
While I understand and partially agree with your sentiment, the problem is tik tok just casually deepfaking people in general without their consent and without being clear about it.
Specially relevant for Americans since it's a Chinese company doing it. They could literally have deepfaked influencers running political deestabilization campaigns on their platform and no one seems to care
TikTok didn't create the ad. This would be obvious to you if you read even a tiny bit of the article.
MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, confirmed that the ad wasn't genuine in a social-media post.
"Lots of people are getting this deepfake scam ad of me… are social media platforms ready to handle the rise of AI deepfakes? This is a serious problem," he wrote.
When asked for comment, a TikTok spokesperson said the company removed the ad within a few hours of its posting and took down the account associated with it for policy violations.
On its ads policy page, TikTok said it prohibits "synthetic media that contains the likeness (visual or audio) of a real person." The company also blocks ads that include trademark infringements and other misuse of intellectual property. "Advertisers are responsible for ensuring that any synthetic media which contains a public figure has consent from the public figure to be used in an ad in this way," the company wrote.
Nor is that even the point, because the cost of generating deep fake AI videos is going down, meaning anybody can do this.