HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Purportedly AI-Generated Deepfake Ads on Facebook Reportedly Impersonate Trump, Musk, Ocasio-Cortez, Warren, Sanders, and Leavitt to Promote Fraudulent Rebates

October 1, 2025

Investigation by Tech Transparency Project reveals deepfakes on Facebook purportedly generated by AI, impersonating public figures including President Trump, Elon Musk, and politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. The ads fraudulently offered $5,000 rebates, potentially generating ad revenue for Meta before removal.

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Matched TAIM controls

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

Alleged deployer
unknown-scammers-operating-meta-ad-accounts, unknown-scammers, senior-health-daily-usa-(advertiser), rfy-news-group-(advertiser-network), relief-eligibility-center-(advertiser), meta, i-love-my-freedom-(advertiser), health-benefits-for-seniors-(advertiser), hannah-grace-(advertiser), get-covered-today-(advertiser), freedom-asset-advocates-(advertiser), end-the-wokeness-(advertiser), asking-america-(advertiser), american-relief-programs-(scam-network)
Alleged developer
meta, unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, unknown-voice-cloning-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
public-trust, meta-users, karoline-leavitt, instagram-users, general-public, facebook-users, epistemic-integrity, elon-musk, elizabeth-warren, elderly-individuals, donald-trump, bernie-sanders, alexandria-ocasio-cortez

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1223

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.