AI incident #1122 ·
Reportedly Sustained Multi-Celebrity Deepfake Persona Scam Targeting Vulnerable Southampton Resident
What happened
Over about five months in 2025, Paul Davis, a Southampton, UK man, reports that he was repeatedly targeted by scammers using purported deepfake videos and images of celebrities including Jennifer Aniston, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Ellie Goulding. The perpetrators allegedly rotated personas to sustain a romance and prize scam, extracting £200 in gift cards. This case suggests a new shift from one-off celebrity deepfakes to persistent, multi-persona targeting of a single vulnerable victim.
Only the incident metadata is stored here. The underlying news reports are on the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0); use the links above to read them.
News reports (20)
Coverage catalogued by the AI Incident Database. Titles link to the original publisher; the text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Scammers
- Alleged harmed party
- Paul Davis, General Public Of United Kingdom, General Public Of Southampton United Kingdom, Emotionally Vulnerable Individuals, Jennifer Aniston, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Ellie Goulding
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
- Malicious Actors & Misuse
- Risk subdomain
- 4.3 Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
- Causal entity
- Human
- Intent
- Intentional
- Timing
- Post-deployment
- Harm level
- —
- Sectors
- —
- Countries
- —
Risk entries describing this failure mode
Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.3.
- Impersonation/identity theft
"Impersonation/identity theft - Theft of an individual, group or organisation’s identity by a third-party in order to defraud, mock or otherwise harm them."
- IP/copyright loss
"IP/copyright loss - Misuse or abuse of an individual or organisation’s intellectual property, including copyright, trademarks, and patents."
- Dehumanisation/objectification
"Dehumanisation/objectification - Use or misuse of a technology system to depict and/or treat people as not human, less than human, or as objects."
- Defamation/libel/slander
"Defamation/libel/slander - Use of a technology system to create, facilitate or amplify false perception(s) about an individual, group, or organisation."
- Financial and business
"Financial and Business - Use or misuse of a technology system in a manner that damages the financial interests of an individual or group, or which causes strategic, operational, legal or financial harm to a business or...
- Cheating/plagiarism
"Cheating/plagiarism - Use of another person’s or group’s words or ideas without consent and/or acknowledgement."
- Cybersecurity
"LLMs may exacerbate cybersecurity risks in various ways (Newman, 2024). Firstly, LLMs may significantly amplify the effectiveness of deceptive operations aimed at tricking people into disclosing sensitive information or...
- Domain-Specific Misuses
"Improvements in LLMs may exert greater pressure to apply LLMs to various domains, such as health and education (Eloundou et al., 2023). Crude efforts to use LLMs in such domains, however, may incur harm and should be di...
Incidents in the same risk subdomain
- Italian Mediaset Journalist Safiria Leccese's Image Was Reportedly Used in a Purportedly AI-Generated Fake Loan Scam
- Scammers Reportedly Used AI-Cloned Daughter's Voice to Defraud Bay Area Mother in Fake Kidnapping Call
- Texas Man Arturo Hernandez Allegedly Published AI-Generated Deepfake Pornography Depicting Women in TAKE IT DOWN Act Case
- Guelph, Ontario, Woman Reportedly Lost $14,000 in Purported Deepfake MrBeast Cryptocurrency Scam
- Purportedly AI-Recreated Clips from Beastie Boys' 'Sabotage' Video Reportedly Appeared in FBI Promotional Video Posted by Kash Patel
- Ahmedabad Aadhaar Fraud Racket Reportedly Used Purportedly AI-Generated Deepfakes to Change Businessman's Linked Mobile Number
Other incidents involving Scammers
- Purportedly AI-Powered KT Platform Reportedly Used in Forced Scamming Operation Involving Trafficked Worker in Myanmar
- Italian Mediaset Journalist Safiria Leccese's Image Was Reportedly Used in a Purportedly AI-Generated Fake Loan Scam
- Lyft Driver in Boca Raton, Florida, Allegedly Used Purported Google Gemini-Generated Image to Support False $75 Damage Fee
- Guelph, Ontario, Woman Reportedly Lost $14,000 in Purported Deepfake MrBeast Cryptocurrency Scam
- Scammers Reportedly Used AI-Generated Images of Missing Dog Archer to Solicit Fraudulent Vet Payment from Deltona, Florida Family
- Purported AI-Generated Impersonations of Albanian Cardiologist Spiro Qirko and Journalist Ilir Topi Were Reportedly Used on Facebook to Promote Hypertension Product in Kosovo