▲ Official portrait of Prabowo
One of the most widely circulated fake videos is about Prabowo, the president of Indonesia who took office last year. In this video, " Prabowo " faces the camera and asks the 'people': " Is there anyone who has not received the assistance from me? What kind of help do you need now? " According to a 56- year-old victim, Yani, the " president " in the video is blinking his eyes and moving his mouth as he speaks, " just like he is really sitting opposite me and talking to me . "
However, although it was the " President " who " distributed money online " , the audience was told that if they wanted to receive the aid, they had to pay a " management fee " to a designated account , with the amount required to be between 200,000 and 1 million rupiahs (about 88 to 440 yuan). Aryani did not recognize the scam in time and transferred 200,000 rupiahs to the scammer. He warned the 'public': " Don't be blinded by unexpected money. I should have thought more at the time. It was obviously unreasonable for me to transfer the money first when I clearly needed financial help. "
Himawan Bayu Aji, head of the Indonesian National Police Cyber Crime Division , said that the police arrested two suspects involved in the case in February this year. However, Indonesian media pointed out that there are thousands of people involved in this AI video fraud. Even after the police filed a case, dozens of videos with the label " Prabowo shared blessings " were still circulating on relevant social platforms. An Indonesian blogger with 77,000 followers shared such videos and received a total of 7.5 million views. Another Indonesian blogger with only a few thousand followers posted more than 100 similar fake videos in more than a month. In addition to Prabowo, the fake objects also include Indonesian Vice President Raqqa and other celebrities.
, co-founder of Mafindo , an Indonesian fact-checking agency , said his team discovers new scams every week as AI deep fake scams spread widely online. " As artificial intelligence tools become more accessible and cheaper, we have seen a trend of deep fake videos flooding the internet since last year. " Fraudsters most often use the images of celebrities to deceive the audience. Famous people including Musk and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau have been used by AI scams.
“ We’ve noticed that the quality of these videos has improved over time. It’s now harder to differentiate between fake and real videos. Another challenge is that the number of these scams is skyrocketing, ” said Aribowo.