Scan the QR code and receive a Bitcoin: Sounds too good to be true – and it is. Videos in which prominent people such as Michael Saylor, Vitalik Buterin and Elon Musk distribute supposed crypto giveaways are increasingly spreading on YouTube, but they are fake. The advances in artificial intelligence make such video snippets appear more and more authentic. Experts fear that AI-generated disinformation will become the biggest global risk in the next few years.
Bitcoin scam with AI clone
Michael Saylor is one of the most quoted crypto mouthpieces. The chairman of software provider MicroStrategy has over three million followers on The 58-year-old regularly appears on podcasts, gives speeches at conferences and gives interviews. There is a corresponding amount of video material and original sounds that fraudsters use for AI-generated videos.
On He deletes 80 videos a day, “but the scammers are publishing more and more.”
The scam, known as a giveaway scam, has been widespread in the crypto space for years. These are usually people who are used for fraudulent purposes because of their reach on social media. AI-supported video programs make such rip-offs seem more and more real. Even for trained eyes, it becomes more difficult to detect deepfakes.
Disinformation as the greatest global risk
The World Economic Forum (WEF) recently classified the spread of AI-based misinformation World Risk Report as the biggest threat in the next two years. “The destructive capabilities of manipulated information” are increasing rapidly, it says, “as open access to increasingly sophisticated technologies increases and trust in information and institutions erodes.”
With many upcoming elections this year, including the presidential election in the USA, AI threatens to increase “social divisions, ideological violence and political oppression”. Artificial intelligence would have enabled an “explosion of fake information and so-called synthetic content,” from “sophisticated voice clones to fake websites.” The report evaluates information from 1,500 experts and risk analysts from business, politics and society.
Blockchain as a means against deepfakes
In order to combat deepfakes, decentralized networks could become more important in the future. Blockchain technology is already being used in model projects to verify information by the Italian news agency Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA), the New York Times and the Associated Press.
Messages or images are stored on the blockchain with a hash. Messages then receive a digital signature with a time stamp that can be used to prove their origin. Against the background of spreading deepfakes, blockchain quality seals that prove the authenticity of information could become more and more established.
This might also interest you