In brief
- Crypto scams keep popping up on Twitter.
- The latest features a deepfake of Elon Musk telling people to plug their cash into an illegitimate trading platform.
- The Tesla CEO was quick to warn on Twitter that the video wasn’t real.
A video featuring an Elon Musk deepfake promising huge returns to invest in a dodgy cryptocurrency scheme has gone viral.
The video features a phony Musk talking about a “new investment project” that people should put their money in to make “30% dividends every day for the rest of their life.”
A deepfake is an increasingly common form of video made by artificial intelligence that creates images of false events. In this case, the deepfake edits previous footage of the world’s richest man and makes it seem like he is saying something he isn’t. The scam was put out by BitVex, a fake trading platform.
This particular video isn’t too convincing, though, as Musk’s voice is robotic and it is difficult to catch exactly what he is saying. The Tesla CEO, who also runs aerospace company SpaceX, was quick to say on Twitter that the video wasn’t real. “Yikes. Def not me,” he tweeted.
Billy Markus, the co-founder of Dogecoin, also chimed in about how bad the deepfake was. “Someone stupid enough to invest in that deserves to lose their money, but at the same time the scammers deserve to spend their life in jail,” he commented.
“Like literally anyone watching that and thinking it’s real would lose their money…
