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If you think you’ve seen the prime minister encouraging you to check out a dodgy-looking cryptocurrency site in social media videos – you haven’t.
More than 890,000 people may have been served with ads featuring deepfakes of Keir Starmer on platforms run by Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram.
In the clips, the PM appears to direct people towards a crypto trading platform called Immediate Edge, and emphasises: ‘This is not a scam.’
However, Immediate Edge is, in fact, a scam.
And Starmer’s not the only high-profile figure used by the fraudsters: another video seems to show Prince William endorsing the same scheme on behalf of the entire Royal Family.
The adverts have been uncovered by media research firm Fenimore Harper, which searched through Meta’s ad library to find them.
According to the company’s report, 43% of ads on Meta featuring Starmer are disinformation – meaning deliberately false, as opposed to misinformation shared unknowingly.
While the videos are not exactly convincing, with the words often failing to match the movements of the mouths, they demonstrate the sophistication of AI voice technology.
The deepfaked PM and the Prince of Wales sound very similar to their real-world counterparts, even if their words don’t quite pass the smell test.
The scam uses people in a position of authority, like Prince William and the prime minister, to earn people’s trust
Rijul Gupta, CEO of deepfake detection firm Deep Media, told Metro.co.uk: ‘Even if the tech looks a bit off, these deepfake ads can still be pretty effective at drawing people in.
‘It’s not always about perfect execution – it’s about playing on people’s trust and familiarity.
‘When folks see someone they recognize, like PM Starmer, they might lower their guard a bit. That initial moment of “Oh, I know this person” can be enough to get people to engage with the content, even if something seems a bit off.’
It’s unknown whether the ads convinced anyone to give their money to the fraudulent platform, but one TrustPilot review for Immediate Edge reads: ‘I almost signed up to this because of ITV and Kier Starmer [sic] claiming it to be legit… turns out you can’t trust either the media or a politician to tell the truth.’
Other reviews refer to different adverts featuring Jeremy Clarkson and Alison Hammond.
Best ways to spot a deepfake
We asked Deep Media’s Rijul Gupta what to look for if you’re suspicious about a potential deepfake. Here’s what he said.
Weird facial movements: Keep an eye on how the lips sync with the words and overall facial expressions.
Lighting that doesn’t quite add up: Deepfakes sometimes struggle with consistent shadows.
Glitchy areas: Especially around the edges of the face or where the fake face meets the neck or hairline.
Unnatural eye behavior: Many deepfakes haven’t nailed realistic eye movements or blinking yet.
Voice mismatches: The voice might sound a bit off compared to what you’d expect, especially on traditionally emphasised words.
Fenimore Harper’s report says more than 250 ads featuring Starmer have popped up on Meta’s platform since the election, with up to £21,053 spent on pushing them out to as many as 891,834 people.
It adds that some of them are still believed to be appearing online and that disinformation on the social media giant’s services is ‘getting worse, not better’.
Meta said its engineers had built detection models specifically to track down ‘celeb-bait’ scams, which use faked depictions of public figures to lure people in.
A spokesperson said: ‘Our systems detected and removed the vast majority of these adverts before this report was published.
‘As part of our ads review process—which can include both automated and human reviews—we have several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live.
‘It is against our policies to run ads that improperly use images of public or political figures for deceptive purposes, and we remove these ads when detected.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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