This article is real — but AI-generated deepfakes look damn close and are scamming people

How amazing is it that Canadian celebrities like TV chef Mary Berg, crooner Michael Bublé, comedian Rick Mercer and hockey megastar Sidney Crosby are finally revealing their secrets to financial success? That is, until the Bank of Canada tried to stop them.

None of that is true, of course, but it was the figurative bag of magic beans apparent scammers on social media tried to sell to people, enticing users to click on sensational posts — Berg under arrest, Bublé being dragged away — and leading them to what looks like, at first glance, a legitimate news story on CTV News's website. 

If you're further intrigued by what appears to be an AI-generated article, you'll have ample opportunity to click on the many links — about 225 on a single page — that direct you to sign up and hand over your first investment of $350, which will purportedly increase more than 10-fold in just seven days.

These were just the latest in a batch of deepfake ads, articles and videos exploiting the names, images, footage and even voices of prominent Canadians to promote investment or cryptocurrency schemes. 

Lawyers with expertise in deepfake and AI-generated content warn they currently have little legal recourse, and that Canadian laws haven't advanced nearly as rapidly as the technology itself. 

Financial scams and schemes appropriating the likenesses of famous people are nothing new, but the use of rapidly-advancing generative-AI technology puts "a new twist on a pretty old concept," said lawyer Molly Reynolds, a partner at Torys LLP in Toronto. 

And it's going to get worse before it gets better. Developing the tools and laws to prevent it from happening is a game of catch-up that we're already losing, she said.

While there is a lot of content on the internet that has obvious signs of being AI-generated, University of Ottawa computer science professor WonSook Lee said some of it is so good now that it's getting much harder to discern what's real.

She said even a couple of years ago she could immediately detect an AI-generated image or deepfake video of a person just by glancing at it and noticing differences in pixelation or composition. But some programs can now create near-perfect photos and videos. 

What isn't perfectly generated can be further altered with photo and video editing software, she added. 

While we are learning about AI, it's getting smarter, too. 

"If we find a method to detect deepfakes, we are helping the deepfakes to improve," she said.

It seems X has curtailed the swarm of Canadian celebrity scam ads, to some extent, and suspended some — but not all — of the accounts sharing them. CBC News attempted to contact a spokesperson for X Corp., the social media platform's parent company, but only received an automated response. 

X, and other social media and website hosting companies may have policies aimed at preventing spam and financial scams on their platforms. But Reynolds said they face a "question of moral obligations versus legal obligations."