Fake adverts for weight loss drugs by a company pretending to be health and beauty retailer Boots have been removed from TikTok after the firm complained.<\/p>\n
The adverts for prescription-only weight loss drugs appeared to show smiling healthcare professionals from the British retailer – but in reality they were made with AI.<\/p>\n
It is illegal to advertise prescription-only weight loss drugs to the public. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Boots told the BBC the firm was “aware” of the videos and had complained to TikTok, which said it had removed the videos.<\/p>\n
A TikTok spokesperson said it did not allow “harmful or misleading AI-generated ads” on its platform.<\/p>\n
But the BBC found while the videos were removed, the account – seemingly located in Hong Kong – was not.<\/p>\n
It was able to re-upload the exact same videos despite the originals being removed.<\/p>\n
TikTok was again notified of this, and the user was subsequently deleted.<\/p>\n
Weight-loss jabs have been available on the NHS in England since the end of June, but they are not available over-the-counter and patients must meet strict criteria in order to be eligible for a prescription.<\/p>\n
Before the fake Boots account was removed, its videos linked to a website where weight loss drugs could be bought.<\/p>\n
It featured testimonies from customers and doctors which were either made with AI or taken from other websites.<\/p>\n
The TikTok videos showed what appeared to be health workers drinking from a vial of blue liquid.<\/p>\n
This would then appear to jump forward several months, with the workers apparently having lost a drastic amount of weight.<\/p>\n
“AI now makes it trivially easy to generate a convincing series of videos or images showing an apparent change in a plausibly real generic health professional, or to impersonate specific health professionals wholesale,” AI expert Sam Gregory told the BBC. <\/p>\n
“The underlying question is how quickly and comprehensively platforms act when they detect – or are notified of – scams that clearly breach their terms of service. <\/p>\n
“Major brands like Boots will get prioritised over an individual business owner who’s been targeted.”<\/p>\n
Other videos uploaded by the same account on TikTok seemed to have used content originally posted by real people, showcasing their weight-loss journey, but repurposed and used without permission.<\/p>\n
All of the videos used similar branding and names to that of the official Boots account on TikTok – using the handle “@BootsOfficial”. <\/p>\n
Boots said it only runs adverts on social media through its actual account @BootsUK.<\/p>\n
The website also included warnings from the MHRA, the UK’s governmental body that ensures medicines and medical devices are safe, about purchasing counterfeit products.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the body told the BBC weight loss medicines “should only be obtained from a registered pharmacy against a prescription issued by a healthcare professional”. <\/p>\n
“Taking these medicines sourced in any other way carries serious risks to your health with no guarantees about what they contain,” they said.<\/p>\n
TikTok said it would continue to “strengthen” its detection methods for AI-generated content and it does not allow “the depiction, promotion, or trade of controlled substances”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fake adverts for weight loss drugs by a company pretending to be health and beauty retailer Boots have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-371270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}