A French woman was conned out of $850,000 after a scammer created crude deepfakes of Brad Pitt in the hospital and convinced her that he urgently needed her help.
The scam was undoubtedly carried out by Yahoo Boy scammers who use the technique as one of their primary formats to steal money from their victims.
So How Did Scammers Pull It Off?
While the deepfakes were not entirely convincing, they were good enough to work. To pull it off, they used online tools like Adobe Photoshop Generative AI fill which gives them a simple tool to highlight and adjust any photo.
In ten seconds I was able to put a semi-realistic cast on the actor using the tool.
Using the feature, virtually anyone can create a deepfake that is just convicing enough to work.
Here is a video demo that I created that shows how they pulled it off.
