If you’ve seen a video on TikTok where Taylor Swift invites you to earn money by watching movies, or where Rihanna promises that “you just have to give your opinion,” stop now. It is not true. What you are seeing is a deepfake — a fake video generated with man-made intelligence that accurately imitates the face, voice and gestures of a real person — and is part of a scam designed specifically to trick you.
This problem is growing at an alarming speed: the 72% of Americans have already watched fake celebrity videos onlineand a new report from authentication company Copyleaks confirms this with compelling evidence.
This is how fake celebrity ads work on TikTok
The mechanics of these scams are more sophisticated than it seems. Scammers use generative AI to create videos where celebrities like Taylor Swift and Rihanna appear recommending fraudulent services, all within formats that appear completely legitimate: red carpet interviews, podcasts, talk shows or media appearances.
The most astute thing about the matter is that many of these videos They mix real images of celebrities with AI-generated enhancementswhich makes the final result incredibly convincing. In one of the cases documented by Copyleaks, a Swift avatar encourages users to sign up for a service called “TikTok Pay.” In another video, a fake version of Rihanna says directly to the camera: “You literally just watch content and give your opinion.”
The hook is always the same: they promise you that you can make easy money by watching movies and leaving reviews. Some ads even use the official TikTok logo to seem more credible, but as soon as you click, they redirect you to third-party sites with suspicious domains — full of spelling errors or with strange extensions like .info, .xyz or .top — where they ask for non-public information, and that’s where the real problem begins.
Taylor Swift, the celebrity most impersonated by scammers
It is no coincidence that Taylor Swift is one of the most used faces in these fraudulent campaigns. According to McAfee’s annual report on deepfakes, Swift ranks first as the most impersonated celebrity in online scams worldwideabove Scarlett Johansson, Jenna Ortega and Sydney Sweeney.
The figures that accompany this phenomenon are worrying: 39% of people who saw a fake endorsement clicked on it, and 10% ended up losing money, with average losses of $525 per victim. One of the best-known cases was when they used her image to promote a fake giveaway for Le Creuset brand kitchen utensils, where Swift’s cloned voice said: “due to a packaging error, we can’t sell 3,000 kitchen sets, so I’m giving them away free from price to my fans.” The hoax was so convincing that thousands of fans fell for it.
The reason they choose celebrities of this caliber is simple: The trust and fanaticism they generate work as a very powerful emotional lever. A Taylor Swift fan who sees his idol recommending something automatically lowers his guard. Scammers know this and exploit it without any scruple. And the current framework, although moving forward, is still not keeping pace: several countries passed specific laws against non-consensual deepfakes in 2024 and 2025, but effectively prosecuting those responsible remains a huge challenge.
TikTok is not alone: the problem is for the entire industry
Although TikTok is at the center of this crisis, it would be unfair to single it out as the only culprit. Meta, the company behind Instagram and Facebook, also faces billions of fraudulent ads a day, and its own oversight board has already formally acknowledged that a “deepfake dilemma” exists within its platforms. YouTube, for its part, recently announced significant investments to combat scam ads featuring celebrities.
What this scenario shows is that The platforms still cannot find an effective solution to curb the proliferation of AI-generated content for criminal purposes. Detection tools exist — such as Copyleaks’ own detector — but the speed at which fake videos are produced far exceeds the capacity for moderation.
How to detect a deepfake before falling into the trap
The good news is that there are warning signs you can identify before it’s too late. Here are the most important ones:
- Be wary of any celebrity who promises easy money or free from price products. — no star of that caliber does that in a TikTok ad.
- Check the URL of the site you are redirected to– If it has misspellings, strange hyphens, or extensions like .xyz, .info, or .top, close it immediately.
- Find the account that posted the video: Scammers accounts typically have few followers, little history, and generic names.
- Look at the details of the video: Deepfakes often have slightly out-of-sync lip movements, blurred edges around hair, and unnatural blinks.
- Check Google for the name of the service or product being promoted before entering any non-public data.
Manmade intelligence has democratized content creation, but it has also put dangerous tools in the hands of those who want to use them to do harm. A celebrity deepfake on TikTok is no longer science fiction — it’s the preferred attack vector of 21st century scammers.
Keep reading:
• China takes drastic measures against deepfakes, will punish their spread
• Thanks to a deepfake they managed to defraud $25 million dollars
• New type of AI scam can put your Gmail email at risk
