Deepfake

A deepfake is video or audio built with AI to show a real person saying or doing something they never said or did. The word comes from "deep learning", the technique behind most of the tools that make it possible.

In investment fraud it is almost never the scam itself. It is the doorway: the familiar face that buys the fifteen seconds needed to get you to a deposit form.

What it looks like when it reaches you#

You are scrolling. A news-style clip appears — a presenter you recognise, or a business figure being interviewed. They are talking about a trading platform that "the banks don't want you to know about". The clip links to what looks like a BBC or CNN article. That article links to the platform. The platform asks for €250.

Every step of that chain is manufactured except the face.

Reconstruction · not a screenshot

Where we have seen it ourselves#

In the Quantum AI campaign, the same platform has been "endorsed" by Elon Musk, Martin Lewis, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, David Beckham, Richard Branson, Sudha Murty and Andrew Forrest. None of them agreed to any of it. Some versions of that campaign went further and rebuilt the look of the BBC, CNN and DW News to carry a fake exclusive before the advert ever mentioned the platform.

That is the whole shape in one case: Quantum AI — the endorsements are all deepfakes.

Why "does it look real" stopped being the test#

The tells people were taught to look for — unnatural blinking, a blurred jawline, audio slightly out of step with the lips — are the tells of tools that are now several generations old. Making a convincing fake has got cheaper and faster every year, and spotting one by eye has got correspondingly harder.

Australia's corporate regulator put it plainly when it reported on the problem on 17 August 2026: ASIC chair Sarah Court said that "AI is making investment scams more convincing and harder to detect. A simple online search is not enough to verify whether an opportunity is legitimate." The same statement noted that "the presence of polished content, familiar branding or convincing testimonials does not mean an investment is legitimate."

In the same year ASIC had 19,400 scams removed — 182% more than the year before — including 7,051 fake investment platforms.

So the useful question is no longer whether the video is real. It is whether the situation is.

The question that still works#

No real public figure introduces a private investment platform through an advert that leads to a deposit form. Not one. Whatever the face, whatever the production quality, that sequence — famous person, trading bot, money now — is the scam, and the video is only how it was delivered.

Two checks cost nothing:

1. Search a short exact phrase from what they said. A genuine interview is already indexed somewhere under its real date and its real context. A sentence written for the advert usually is not indexed at all.
2. Go to the person's own verified channel. Someone who had really launched a platform would be saying so there.

If you have already paid, the deepfake is not the part that matters any more — what you paid with and how long ago does. Tell us what happened and we will talk it through with you, free. We never charge for that answer, and anyone who asks you to pay to get your money back is running the next scam.

Sources

• ASIC, media release 26-195MR, ASIC warns scammers are using AI to spin vast webs of deception, 17 August 2026 — https://www.asic.gov.au/about-asic/news-centre/find-a-media-release/2026-releases/26-195mr-asic-warns-scammers-are-using-ai-to-spin-vast-webs-of-deception
• The Proofmark, Quantum AI: the endorsements are all deepfakes, 28 September 2026, with the underlying FCA, Central Bank of Ireland and SFC warnings listed there.