YouTube is flooded with deepfake videos of Apple CEO Tim Cook promoting crypto scams. These videos appeared during Apple’s livestream of the launch of the new iPhone, Cointelegraph reported.
In a scam video on September 9, the AI-powered Cook asked viewers to send Bitcoin, Ether, USDT or Dogecoin to a "contribution address," claiming that Apple would return double the amount.
The videos are a common “doubling” scam that promises to return double the cryptocurrency, but in reality the scammers keep the funds.
One scam video appeared on a YouTube channel pretending to be "Apple US" and even had a verification stamp. Videos and screenshots showed that some of the fake live broadcasts received hundreds of thousands of views, but many were likely bots.
YouTube Support acknowledged the scam in a September 9 post, urging users to report the videos through official tools. The fake videos have now been taken down and the accounts have been shut down.
Increasingly, high-profile people and events are being targeted by scammers using deepfake technology. In June, the YouTube news channel of major Australian broadcaster Seven was hijacked by crypto scammers to post a fake video of Elon Musk.