TikTok and other social media platforms are hosting AI-generated deepfake videos of doctors whose words have been manipulated to help sell supplements and spread health misinformation.
The factchecking organisation Full Fact has uncovered hundreds of such videos featuring impersonated versions of doctors and influencers directing viewers to Wellness Nest, a US-based supplements firm.
All the deepfakes involve real footage of a health expert taken from the internet. However, the pictures and audio have been reworked so that the speakers are encouraging women going through menopause to buy products such as probiotics and Himalayan shilajit from the company’s website.
The revelations have prompted calls for social media giants to be much more careful about hosting AI-generated content and quicker to remove content that distorts prominent people’s views.
“This is certainly a sinister and worrying new tactic,” said Leo Benedictus, the factchecker who undertook the investigation, which Full Fact published on Friday.
He added that the creators of deepfake health videos deploy AI so that “someone well-respected or with a big audience appears to be endorsing these supplements to treat a range of ailments”.
Prof David Taylor-Robinson, an expert in health inequalities at Liverpool University, is among those whose image has been manipulated. In August, he was shocked to find that TikTok was hosting 14 doctored videos purporting to show him recommending products with unproven benefits.
Though Taylor-Robinson is a specialist in children’s health, in one video the cloned version of him was talking about an alleged menopause side-effect called “thermometer leg”.
The fake Taylor-Robinson recommended that women in menopause should visit a website called Wellness Nest and buy what it called a natural probiotic featuring “10 science-backed plant extracts, including turmeric, black cohosh, Dim [diindolylmethane] and moringa, specifically chosen to tackle menopausal symptoms”.
Female colleagues “often report deeper sleep, fewer hot flushes and brighter mornings within weeks”, the deepfake doctor added.
The real Taylor-Robinson discovered that his likeness was being used only when a colleague alerted him. “It was really confusing to begin with – all quite surreal,” he said. “My kids thought it was hilarious.
“I didn’t feel desperately violated, but I did become more and more irritated at the idea of people selling products off the back of my work and the health misinformation involved.”
The footage of Taylor-Robinson used to make the deepfake videos came from a talk on vaccination he gave at a Public Health England (PHE) conference in 2017 and a parliamentary hearing on child poverty at which he gave evidence in May this year. In one misleading video, he was depicted swearing and making misogynistic comments while discussing menopause.
TikTok took down the videos six weeks…
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