{"id":177675,"date":"2025-12-06T03:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T03:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/177675\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T03:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T03:36:10","slug":"someone-used-ai-to-make-a-fake-avi-loeb-on-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/177675\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone Used AI to Make a Fake Avi Loeb on YouTube"},"content":{"rendered":"

Generative AI has made it easier than ever before to impersonate somebody else, from scammers using cloned voices of targets for phishing scams<\/a> to deepfakes of deceased celebrities<\/a> circulating on OpenAI\u2019s Sora app.<\/p>\n

Even Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who has gotten considerable media attention this year for his eyebrow-raising theory that mysterious interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS could be an alien spacecraft<\/a> visiting the solar system, has now fallen victim to the trend.<\/p>\n

A YouTube channel called \u201cDr. Avi Loeb<\/a>\u201d is impersonating the researcher by seemingly using generative AI tools to clone both his likeness and voice, suggesting the topic has sparked enough public interest to be lucrative to scammers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndeed, these videos are fake, produced by AI,\u201d Loeb confirmed in an email to Futurism. \u201cI reported them to YouTube.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Loeb, who\u2019s speculated that 3I\/ATLAS and other interstellar objects could have technological origins while acknowledging that it\u2019s also likely they\u2019re just naturally occurring objects, the videos on the YouTube channel are extremely sensational, with titles like \u201c3I\/ATLAS Is a PROBE \u2014 New Data Leaves No Doubt.\u201d <\/p>\n

In an addendum to his latest blog post<\/a>, which discusses the most recent Hubble Space Telescope images<\/a> of 3I\/ATLAS, Loeb explored the broader implications of being impersonated.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine creating videos that feature avatars of scientists that look like them and speak in their voice, but spread counterfactual information about 3I\/ATLAS,\u201d he wrote. \u201cHow would the public know who to believe?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a plot from a science fiction novel but the reality we face today,\u201d Loeb added. \u201cOver the past two weeks, I received hundreds of emails from fans who noticed a YouTube channel named after me, accessible here, with fake videos about the interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS, created by artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apart from some very strange jerky movements, the videos on the YouTube page also show a clock that\u2019s \u201cfrozen on a specific time\u201d in the background, as Loeb noted, in another clue that they were manipulated and possibly rendered by AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hold the entity that created the fake videos legally liable to defamation and false content,\u201d he added on his blog. \u201cBy now, my fans and I filed dozens of reports to YouTube but the company did not take responsibility to fix this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The channel is likely violating YouTube\u2019s terms of service. The company\u2019s impersonation policy<\/a> forbids any \u201ccontent intended to impersonate a person or channel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf your content violates this policy, we may terminate your channel or account,\u201d the policy warns.<\/p>\n

Futurism reached out to YouTube, but didn\u2019t hear back by press time.<\/p>\n

As to why anybody would go through all the effort of impersonating him, Loeb offered one possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe creators can make money from advertising out of a YouTube channel,\u201d he told Futurism in a follow-up email. \u201cI have a very large fan base with more than 5 million readers per month of my essays on Medium.com.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother motivation might be misinformation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

To date, the offending YouTube channel, which was created in September, has amassed over 1.4 million views. If monetized, the account could\u2019ve made anywhere from $14,000 to $42,000, assuming a payout of one to three cents per view<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The account started impersonating Loeb on November 24. Before then, it had been uploading content in Tagalog that featured a man wearing a lab coat, identified as \u201cDr. Ricardo Reyes,\u201d who gave health advice such as recommending natural diabetes treatments<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In short, it\u2019s a bizarre flash point that sets a worrying precedent, with platforms dragging their feet on taking down clear AI impersonations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are living in a new reality where fake content can be easily generated by AI,\u201d Loeb wrote on his blog. \u201cThis raises a serious problem of how to authenticate the validity of information on the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cScience focuses on figuring out the physical reality based on facts,\u201d he added. \u201cThe nemesis of science is fake content created by AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on Loeb: The Mysterious Interstellar Object Appears to Be Pulsing in a \u201cHeartbeat Pattern\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Generative AI has made it easier than ever before to impersonate somebody else, from scammers using cloned voices…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-177675","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-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}