BBC Wildlife Presenter Caught Up In AI Scam

Max Goldbart
·3 min read

A well-known BBC wildlife presenter has been caught up in a scam that saw a fake AI-generated program mimic her voice and give permission for her face to be used in an advert.

Liz Bonnin and her management team noticed last week that the presenter of Our Changing Planet and Arctic From Above was fronting a poster for insect repellent spray, which neither her nor management had signed off.

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On closer investigation, the voice messages supposedly from Bonnin that had confirmed she was happy to appear in the advert were revealed to be AI-generated.

“At the very beginning it does sound like me but then I sound a bit Australian and then it’s definitely an English woman by the end,” Bonnin, who is Irish, told The Guardian, which broke the story. “It’s all fragmented and there’s no cadence to it.”

The Guardian revealed that the company that produced the advert, Incognito, was sent a number of voice messages by someone its CEO thought was Bonnin, and that Incognito had previously sought Bonnin’s endorsement before being approached by a Facebook profile adopting her identity. The company paid an account given to them by the fake Bonnin and her image — which has now been retracted — appeared several days later on the advert.

Incognito CEO Howard Carter claimed to The Guardian he did not get the deal signed off through Bonnin’s management agency because the person impersonating her said “she was doing us a favor, provided we do it direct with her and not involve her main agency.” Deadline understands Carter and Bonnin had met several times in the past. Carter confirmed the AI mix-up to Deadline.

“Essentially theft”

Deep fakes such as the one used to trick Incognito are “essentially theft,” a rep for Bonnin told Deadline.

“It is an extremely worrying trend for everyone in the creative industries,” she added. “Reputations are built on trust and we follow strict rules about endorsements to preserve our clients’ professional credibility. But this technology is progressing so fast, lawmakers and regulators can’t keep pace and social media platforms are far too slow to remove harmful content. Meanwhile this misuse of AI can damage reputations and there are more and more examples of the public being scammed out of their money.”

She added that there is a “lot to learn from this story about the dangers of AI and fake accounts, which could have huge ramifications for all of us.”

The episode demonstrates the dangers of the rapidly-developing tech. The BBC, for which Bonnin does most of her TV work, has previously said it is working with major tech companies on AI pilots but has sparked controversy on several occasions over the tech including when using AI for Doctor Who promotion.

Last week, UK government intervention on AI was urged by TV producer trade body Pact and actors union Equity.

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