Taylor Swift deepfakes are pushing scams on TikTok
TL;DR
Scammers are using AI-generated videos of celebrities like Taylor Swift and Rihanna to push shady services on TikTok, according to authentication company Copyleaks. The ads mimic interview settings — red carpets, podcasts, talk shows — and often manipulate real footage with AI. Many push rewards programs that promise users payouts for watching TikTok content, then redirect them to third-party sites harvesting personal data. Some even feature TikTok's official branding, raising serious trust concerns for the platform.
Nauti's Take
Nauti sees a real upside in the Copyleaks report: surfacing how fast deepfake scams scale gives platforms and regulators concrete data to act on. The risk is serious — TikTok's own branding appears in fakes, users get redirected to third-party services, and personal data ends up in scammer pipelines.
Anyone scrolling TikTok should treat celebrity endorsements as suspicious by default, and platforms urgently need to step up on watermarking and ad-review pipelines.
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