Susanna Reid couldn’t hide her shock as her likeness was used in a terrifying deepfake during Tuesday’s Good Morning Britain.
The presenter and her co-host Ed Balls were joined by fraud expert Simon Horsewell and Laura Noye from tech company Onfido to discuss the rise in deep-fake AI scams.
To demonstrate the advance in AI techology, a deepfake filter was placed on Laura’s face to mimic Susanna’s likeness, before the pair were shown side-by-side on screen.
Simon explained that the filter had been created with the use of just one photo, with Susanna sharing fears that her loved ones could fall victim to a scam.
She said: ‘Let’s say Laura FaceTimed a member of my family asking for money. How is, for instance, my mum, going to be able to tell that is not me.’
Susanna Reid couldn’t hide her shock as her likeness was used in a terrifying deepfake during Tuesday’s Good Morning Britain
To demonstrate the advance in AI techology, a deepfake filter was placed on an expert’s face to mimic Susanna’s likeness, before the pair were shown side-by-side on screen
Simon added that scammers are now using AI deep fake software to replicate the face and voices of individuals to open bank accounts, access personal information and recreate documents such as passports and drivers licences of other people.
Asking Laura to move her head from side to side, Susanna shared concerns about the quality of the deep-fake.
Asking how easy it would be to change a passport to look like her own, Simon responded: ‘With just a single photo that we have, which we found online, we can place that in front of the camera and if we look at the actual webcam footage, we can see that we have put your face to that document. So it’s all the other details but it’s your face on there.’
Ed Balls responded: ‘Oh my gosh… It’s not something the government is telling us much about. We get told lots of public messages about crime or about health but I have not heard the government tell us about identity fraud.’
Last month, an investigation revealed that more than 250 British celebrities, including Channel 4 newsreader Cathy Newman, have been victims of deepfake pornography.
The probe, which was conducted by Channel 4 itself, found digitally altered footage of scores of high profile figures have had their faces superimposed onto pornographic videos using artificial intelligence (AI).
The broadcaster said it did an analysis of the five most visited deepfake websites and found 255 of the almost 4,000 famous individuals listed were British, with all but two being women.
It comes months after deepfake images of pop star Taylor Swift were posted to X, formerly Twitter, and experts have warned about the dangers posed by the technology in spreading misinformation.
Simon explained that the filter had been created with the use of just one photo, with Susanna sharing fears that her loved ones could fall victim to a scam
The Online Safety Act makes it a criminal offence to share, or threaten to share, a manufactured or deepfake intimate image or video of another person without his or her consent but it is not intended to criminalise the creation of such deepfake content.
It comes after Susanna was called out by Boyzlife as she made a blunder on GMB earlier this month.
Keith and Brian appeared on the show to promote their upcoming tour as musical duo Boyzlife, which is set to begin in January 2025.
But before they could mention their latest announcement, the GMB hosts shared a sweet 30-year-old throwback clip of Richard interviewing Boyzone.
As their brief trip down memory lane ended, so did their interview, as Susanna seemingly decided it was time to sign off without discussing the group’s tour.
As the broadcaster tried to say goodbye to their guests, wishing Brian and Keith ‘all of our best’, the two quickly called out her mistake.
‘You never mentioned the tour!’ they exclaimed in unison.
Amused by the slip up, Keith quipped: ‘We don’t get up this early in the morning, we only do it to promote our tour.’
