AI-generated deepfakes continue to pose a growing global threat, with investment opportunity scams emerging as the fastest-growing use case.
Between November 2025 and January 2026, the AI Incident Database documented more than a hundred separate deepfake incidents, many aimed at defrauding victims. Impersonation-for-profit is the “largest, most repetitive thread” in the latest reports. Researchers warn that these videos often feature familiar faces and trusted formats, creating credibility through seemingly official accounts.
Celebrity Sweepstakes
In many cases, politicians or celebrities appear to endorse a product or platform on social media. Victims are then funneled through a series of requests that ultimately ask them to transfer money. Some examples from the most recent incident report, all circulating on Meta, include:
- A Thai news anchor and the CEO of the Miss Universe Organization promoting an online investment promising rapid, high returns.
- Greek Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis depicted endorsing fraudulent “high-yield” investment schemes.
- Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest shown endorsing a fraudulent crypto platform called Quantum AI.
Slow Down, Take a Beat
The key to these scams is what the AI Incident Database calls “industrialized plausibility.” These videos combine low-cost realism with widespread distribution and weak verification methods. So how can social media users tell the difference between these deepfakes and reality?
“From a technical perspective, spotting deepfake red flags can be a bit tricky,” said Suzanne Sando, Lead Analyst of Fraud Management at Javelin Strategy & Research. “Pay attention to the edges and background of the focal point of the video. Look for blurring or warping in spots where it doesn’t look natural, and for mismatched or unaligned edges. Lighting and shadows are also a dead giveaway. If the lighting on the person doesn’t match up with the background or room. If there’s any audio component, listen for pacing and tone, and keep an ear out for any odd sounds or unnatural cuts or edits.
“If there’s even a hint of a doubt if something might be a deepfake or AI-generated, search on your own for verified sources for the offer,” she said. “In the instances of investment opportunity deepfakes, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Many scams rely on a sense of urgency to drive the victim to act immediately, but this is the time to slow down, take a beat, and do your research.”
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