ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (WHAT THE TECH?) — Celebrities get paid millions of dollars to endorse products that fans often purchase just because of those endorsements.

Now with AI, scammers can make any celebrity say whatever they want. Worse yet, those scams are all over social media, making it hard to tell what’s real vs. fake.

For example, a social media ad showed Luke Combs endorsing weight-loss gummies with his voice and face. It even included Lainey Wilson and got popular enough to where she had to make a post disproving the ad.

Creating fake ads is simple. Scammers use free software and type what they want to say in a celebrity’s voice. The software adjusts lip movements to match what the scammers wrote.

If you follow the link in the ad, you’ll find it isn’t really an article in USA Today. It’s a website out of China.

Facebook has marked many of these fake ads as “false” but Meta left them up. Why? Because they’re sponsored. Meta’s getting paid for sharing these ads.

Be suspicious of any advertisement you see on social media. Be skeptical if an ad features a well-known celebrity. If you don’t see those ads on regular TV, they’re probably fake.

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