(WHTM)– Last year it was Tom Hanks, this year Taylor Swift, and who knows which celebrity will be the next one used to scam people in a deepfake artificial intelligence ad.

With tickets to Taylor Swift 2024 shows selling for thousands of dollars scammers are looking for every way to exploit her likeness including AI deepfakes to sell merchandise.

Earlier this year, a slick social media ad showed a fake Taylor Swift saying she is giving away thousands of sets of a brand of cookware that she has talked about before; “Hey all it’s Taylor Swift here. Do to a packaging error, we can’t sell 3,000 Le Cruset cookware sets.”

“It is very easy to create incredibly realistic deepfake content, for any person at this point,” Dave Hatter said.

Security expert Hatter of Intrust IT says all the scammers needed was video of Taylor Swift, and a recording of her voice, the AI program then had her endorse the product. Le Creuset Kitchenware says it had nothing to do with this fake ad.

A similar fake ad used old video of Tom Hanks.

Hatter would like to see rules requiring deepfake content to be clearly labeled especially on major social media sites, but nothing like that currently exists.

“As the technology progresses, it’s getting harder and harder to look at synthetic media content and say that it’s been faked,” Hatter said.

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Hatter says you need to be careful of social media ads from celebrities. People who fell for this say the scammers billed their credit card, and sent nothing.

Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have all pulled down the ad. But you know more are coming so be skeptical and don’t waste your money.

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