Gareth Morgan: former economist and investment manager responds to investment scam deepfake

Former economist and investment manager Gareth Morgan was caught off-guard by an AI deepfake using his voice and likeness, and he's warned people to be careful.

The investment scam made the rounds on Facebook and Instagram and encouraged Kiwis to invest in a vaguely-defined US-based scheme.

Gareth Morgan says his daughter showed him the scam - and it almost had him fooled. 

"The only giveaway is the backdrop, I don't recognise the house behind me. But everything else - the face, the lip movements, the voice, obviously - I can't tell."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
AI deep fakes apparently getting so real that they're even
starting to trick the people they're supposed to be imitating.
Gareth Morgan is the latest target of one of these scams.
In this video, he's asking Keywis to invest in a
dodgy US investment scheme.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Banks are in the business of growing your wealth. They're
in the business of growing their own Stop playing their game.
I've teamed up with a US investment group to focus
on real opportunities in the US market.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Gareth is with us. Now, Hey, Gareth, the hell are you?
It's pretty good. It's pretty good.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
It's awesome. Like I'm in the video, it's just unbelievable.
I just I've watched it two or three times now
and I can't believe me.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
You can't believe well, is there No, I haven't watched it.
Is there no giveaway? Like, there's no kind of like
clipping or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
It's just legitimately.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
The only giveaway is the backdrop is I don't recognize
the house behind behind me. But everything else like that,
you know, obviously, the face, the lip movement, the voice, obviously,
I mean I can't tell.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, interesting you have you run it past Joe or
any of the kids.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
I haven't actually asked Jane what she thinks of it,
but yeah, that's a good.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Idea because unfailingly blunt, and she'll tell you what she
really thinks.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Oh yeah, no, I know. It's be embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Because it was one of it. Was it your daughter
who spotted it first?

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yeah, one of the daughters that web rang up five
of them. I know she texted me for hey, Dad,
have you seen this? But what she saw was the
written words. She didn't see the video that came later,
So she just saw the Facebook post and it was
an ad actually, and it's come out of the UK
when you trace it back. But you know, I've been

(01:39):
to Facebook a few times and asked them to take
it down. Blah blah. But of course you don't get
a human being. You just get a dialogue box to
throw out and off it goes. You don't even get
an acknowledgment that it's that you've sent it, so you're
completely powerless. You can't do anything.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
It just goes into this giant hole where every complaint
into Facebook and they never do anything about it.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
No.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Well, I mean they're more powerful in countries, so an
individual's not going to be able to stop anything, Heather.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
How do we get around the scareth if we've got
if we've got deep fake videos that are even convincing
the people that they are of, how do the rest
of us know that we can't trust it?

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Well, you know, I would have thought by now that
with these sort of social media Twitter and Facebook and
that people would realize that, you know, there's so much
false stuff on them that they're not worth bothering with.
And you know, that's what we normally do, don't we
self censer? They say, well, that's just crap, so we

(02:39):
go somewhere else. But I think that, on the other hand,
the draw card that was having all your friends there
and being able to chat back and forth so powerful
that people just turn the blind eye to so it's
not self censoring, you know. I think that's that's the issue.
I mean, that reminds me actually the early days that
Trade Me, when we did trade Me way back then

(03:01):
and people started complaining, hey, this guy's taking my money
and you know, the goods are fake and all arrest
of it, and how Trade Me got round it in
the end was having that star system, you know, where
you rank each other the biers and sellers, and that's
that is self regulating. But Facebook doesn't have that, you see,
and has nothing like that, so it just lets it work.

(03:22):
And you know, if you read that book by that
New Zealand lady who was when Williams, that's an awesome
book by the way. I mean, she really gave you
a window into the culture of the higher ceschelons, which
is they don't care because we're you know, we're so powerful,
no one can stop us sort of thing. So it's
pretty scary. But boy, I'm impressed by the power of AI.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Isn't it.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Boran.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, Gareth, thank you very much. You look after yourself.
Thanks for the reading recommendation. It's Gareth Morgan, investment manager,
former economists and obviously daded to trade me founded. For
more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to news talks.
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