Jacob Elordi and other celebrities have been the target of disturbing deepfakes circulating online.
In a disturbing development, the star of Euphoria has become the latest victim of a non-consensual deepfake.
According to NBC News, some of the deepfakes of Elordi circulating on X (formerly Twitter) have been viewed as many as 3 million times.
The videos shared are sexually explicit and have been wrongly labelled as “leaks” of famous actors.
According to the outlet, OnlyFans creators claim that someone is using their bodies in fake posts.
He said he was only 17 when he made the video, and commented on several posts calling for X to remove it.
Starting in April 2023, the platform is adding a policy banning “synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive, confuse, or harm people.”
X also prohibits content that “portrays an individual in a sexual manner without that individual's consent.”
However, the content still continues to circulate on the app.
People have been using AI to create deepfakes by manipulating the likeness of other people and replacing them with different likenesses.
In recent years, scammers and trolls have been using the technology to place people's faces onto explicit images and videos.
Celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Megan Thee Stallion have also recently fallen victim to deepfakes.
Some trolls have even tried to use AI to create political deepfakes to interfere in upcoming elections.
“Nasty and evil”
Elordi has not commented on the latest deepfakes, but other celebrities have condemned the harmful practices of fraudsters exploiting their images.
Recently, Kate Beckinsale had to issue a public warning after multiple people messaged her saying their family had fallen victim to a Catfish scam.
“This is truly horrible behavior and not the first time an elderly man has been scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Beckinsale wrote on Instagram.
“Whoever is doing this is abhorrent and evil.”
What are deepfakes and how do they work?
Here's what you need to know…
- Deepfakes are videos of fake people that look completely real.
- These are created using computers to create convincing recreations of events that never actually happened.
- Often this involves swapping one person's face for another's and making them say whatever they like.
- The process begins by feeding the AI hundreds, or even thousands, of photos of the victim.
- Machine learning algorithms swap out certain parts of each frame to spit out realistic-looking photos and videos that are actually fake.
- In one famous deepfake video, comedian Jordan Peele created a realistic video of former President Barack Obama calling Donald Trump a “moron.”
- In another example, Will Smith's face was pasted onto the character Neo from the action movie “The Matrix,” which Smith famously turned down in order to star in the flop “Wild Wild West,” but the role went to Keanu Reeves.
She told her followers to use the post as blanket confirmation that these catfish are not her.
“Any messages claiming to be from me are scammers. I would never send someone a direct message asking for money.”
Trolls using Beckinsale's photos have put her in a dangerous situation.
Things had gotten worse, and it became clear that strange men had started showing up at her house.
“During lockdown, I was catfished by several men who flew into LA from out of state, gave me my address, and showed up on my doorstep late at night (on different nights over a period of several weeks) assuming we were in some kind of relationship,” she wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post in 2023, The Independent reported.
“My then boyfriend and I went into complete panic mode. The men who were scammed were humiliated and some were arrested, but the scammers were never caught and I ended up having to move.”
“So if you think I'm messaging you, it's not me.”
