AI incident #1397 ·
Deepfakes Reportedly Impersonated David Taylor-Robinson and Other UK Health Experts to Promote Wellness Nest Supplements
What happened
In the UK, purported deepfake videos reportedly impersonated Professor David Taylor-Robinson and other health experts on TikTok and other platforms to promote supplements linked to Wellness Nest. The videos allegedly altered real footage and cloned voices to spread misleading medical claims about menopause, misuse identifiable individuals' likenesses, and expose viewers seeking health advice to health misinformation and deceptive marketing.
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 (2)
Coverage catalogued by the AI Incident Database. Titles link to the original publisher; the text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Synthetic media creators Scammers impersonating David Taylor-Robinson Scammers Deepfake creators
- Alleged developer
- Synthetic media generation technology developers Synthetic audio generation technology developers Deepfake technology developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Women seeking menopause advice Women and girls Women Victims of impersonation scams People seeking medical advice Epistemic integrity David Taylor-Robinson
AI systems implicated
TikTokSynthetic media generation technologySynthetic audio generation technologyDeepfake technology
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...
Related incidents on the AI Incident Database
Linked by AIID editors or by its text-similarity model.
- Reported Deepfake Influencers on TikTok Allegedly Used to Promote Fraudulent Wellness Products
- Facial Recognition Trial Performed Poorly at Notting Hill Carnival
- Opaque Fraud Detection Algorithm by the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions Allegedly Discriminated against People with Disabilities
- UK passport photo checker shows bias against dark-skinned women
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 Synthetic media creators
- Delhi Man Allegedly Used AI to Create and Circulate Obscene Images of College Acquaintance
- Wyoming Woman's Childhood Photograph Reportedly Used to Generate Thousands of Explicit Images with Grok
- Man in Egypt Reportedly Convicted of Using AI-Fabricated Sexual Content to Blackmail Relative
- Two Men Allegedly Created and Distributed Purportedly AI-Generated Sexual Images of 22 Women in Silleda, Galicia
- Texas Man Arturo Hernandez Allegedly Published AI-Generated Deepfake Pornography Depicting Women in TAKE IT DOWN Act Case
- Lyft Driver in Boca Raton, Florida, Allegedly Used Purported Google Gemini-Generated Image to Support False $75 Damage Fee