Phishers Allegedly Using AI-Generated Video of YouTube CEO Neal Mohan to Target Creators

March 4, 2025

Scammers have allegedly employed an AI-generated deepfake of YouTube CEO Neal Mohan to defraud users by abusing platform features. This fake video purportedly announces fictitious alterations to YouTube’s monetization policy, deceiving creators into clicking malicious links or downloading malware via private videos and emails from a bogus YouTube address.

This incident underscores the importance of promoting trustworthy AI and implementing guardrails for AI, such as the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern, Map, Measure, Manage). For those interested in shaping safe and secure AI practices, JOIN US.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.587, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.578, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
GOVERN 2.2 — similarity 0.573, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: phishers, scammers-impersonating-neal-mohan, unknown-scammers
Alleged developer: unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties: youtube-creators, youtube-users, youtube-account-holders

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/965

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.