Deepfakes are wrecking influencers’ credibility, one fake ad at a time
Influencers are finding AI-generated versions of themselves in ads they never agreed to, endorsing products they have never heard of. Emily Schuman, a lifestyle creator with over 500,000 Instagram followers, discovered a digitally altered photo of herself promoting a telehealth company's GLP-1 drugs without her knowledge or consent.
Why this matters: This is identity theft with a marketing budget. Someone takes a real person's photo, alters it, and runs paid ads as if that person said something they never said. The influencer gets the reputational damage. The scam company gets the sales. Followers get misled about products that can affect their health. There are real laws against this — right of publicity, false endorsement, FTC rules — but enforcement has not caught up to how fast and cheap deepfake ads have become. Until it does, anyone with a public photo is a potential unpaid spokesperson for something they would never touch.
Who should care: General readers · AI governance · Policy
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