YouTube faces wave of AI-generated Elon Musk videos promoting crypto scams during eclipse streams.
The recent solar eclipse has captured widespread attention, becoming a hot topic across news platforms, social media, and the internet, thanks to an array of shared articles, posts, and visual content. On YouTube, live streams dedicated to the solar eclipse are attracting massive audiences, with some streams gathering hundreds of thousands of viewers simultaneously.
Yet, amidst this popularity, a wave of deceptive livestreams has emerged. These streams, originating from channels falsely claiming to be SpaceX, feature AI-generated speeches purportedly by Elon Musk.
The hidden agenda behind these fraudulent streams is to deceive viewers into parting with their cryptocurrency. The uncovering of this scheme was first brought to light by Mashable, crediting the iOS developer and research team Mysk for their investigative efforts.
Woow! A verified @YouTube account is impersonating @SpaceX's account and airing a livestream about the solar eclipse. The stream shows a deepfake of Elon Musk asking users to scan a QR code on the screen and deposit cryptocurrencies to have them doubled. 95K users are watching… pic.twitter.com/A0B5XiAfUg
— Mysk 🇨🇦🇩🇪 (@mysk_co) April 8, 2024
How does the scam work?
All of these streams exhibit a consistent format, playing a looped prerecorded video in which Elon Musk appears next to a SpaceX sign, addressing an audience. This video, however, uses an artificial intelligence-generated voice of Musk to pitch a bogus cryptocurrency investment scheme, claiming to double the investments of viewers.
Superimposed on this video is a QR code with the message “Eclipse of 2024 – Change your life,” urging viewers to scan it.
This QR code directs users to a website where they’re encouraged to “invest” their digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, Ether, or other well-known cryptocurrencies, directly on the platform.
Occasionally, these live streams are further manipulated by the presence of a counterfeit Elon Musk account in the live chat, claiming to update viewers on the substantial investments being made. This fake account floods the chat with links, allegedly guiding viewers to where they can make their investments.
WOW what an OPPORTUNITY #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/Wl4bWQofCN
— Jason Paladino (@jason_paladino) April 8, 2024
One particular stream, bearing the title “2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of SpaceX,” managed to attract more than 210,000 viewers simultaneously at its peak. Another stream titled “Live: Solar Eclipse Spectacular 2024 of SpaceX” garnered nearly 100,000 viewers at one point, attracting tens of thousands of viewers consistently over its duration. Remarkably, some of these streams have remained live for extended periods and are hosted on YouTube channels with subscriber counts in the hundreds of thousands.
The persistence of such deceptive SpaceX and Elon Musk-themed videos on YouTube suggests their effectiveness as a scamming technique, highlighting the ongoing challenge of combatting misinformation and fraud on digital platforms.
Featured image credit: Kerem Gülen/Midjourney
