HISPI Project Cerebellum
AI Incidents

Fake AI-Generated Law Firms Sent Fake DMCA Notices to Increase SEO

March 1, 2024

In March 2024, fake law firms using AI-generated identities sent fraudulent DMCA takedown notices to website owners, demanding backlinks for SEO gains. These AI-generated law firms, like "Commonwealth Legal," used GAN models for realistic attorney images and fabricated bios. The scam involved fake legal threats to coerce site owners into adding backlinks, exploiting AI technology for deceptive practices.
Alleged deployer
unknown-scammers, commonwealth-legal
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-creators
Alleged harmed parties
website-owners, website-operators, ernie-smith

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/717

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.