HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Purported Widespread Use of AI-Generated Deepfake Videos Impersonate Malaysian Leaders in Investment Scams

July 4, 2025

Deepfake videos, allegedly generated using AI, have been reportedly used to promote fraudulent investment schemes involving Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and other officials. Last year, 13,956 such cases were reported with RM2.11 billion in alleged losses. Victims were misled by realistic deepfakes circulated via Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram. The scammers are said to adapt quickly, creating new deepfakes when content is removed. This incident underscores the importance of trustworthy AI and highlights the role of HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM in implementing guardrails for AI.

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Alleged deployer
unknown-scammers-targeting-malaysian-public-figures, unknown-scammers
Alleged developer
unknown-voice-cloning-technology-developers, unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
tun-tengku-maimun-tuan-mat, tan-sri-tony-fernandes, tan-sri-robert-kuok, malaysian-public-figures, malaysian-political-leaders, malaysian-business-leaders, general-public-of-malaysia, epistemic-integrity, anwar-ibrahim

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1136

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.