Description: According to an ABC News (Australia) 7.30 report, a second wave of deepfake scam ads impersonating Norman Swan and other public figures circulated widely on Meta platforms in 2025, promoting unproven health supplements. The campaign featured new voice-cloned videos and more impersonation tactics, and it reportedly contributed to financial and health harms. Investigators reportedly linked the ads to businesses in Australia and New Zealand using deceptive redirects and alias branding.
Editor Notes: See Incident 880 for details on the earlier wave of reported deepfakes impersonating Norman Swan and Jonathan Shaw. This incident is a variant of that case and reflects an escalation in tactics, volume, and the inclusion of additional public figures. Reconstructing the timeline of events: (1) According to ABC's 7.30, deepfake ads featuring Norman Swan began appearing around late 2022, allegedly falsely promoting unproven health supplements. (2) Despite early takedown requests, reportedly new deepfakes circulated in larger volume in 2024, including impersonations of Professor Jonathan Shaw. (3) Individuals reportedly stopped medication or lost money due to these ads. (4) On 05/21/2025, ABC published a detailed report linking the campaign to businesses in Australia and New Zealand.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown voice cloning technology developer and Unknown deepfake technology developer developed an AI system deployed by Unidentified actors linked to Vellec Group NZ Ltd , Unidentified actors linked to Healthy Life Choices NZ Ltd and Unidentified actors linked to Apex United Pty Ltd, which harmed Rebel Wilson , Public trust in medical guidance , Norman Swan , Jonathan Shaw , General public of Australia , Australians with chronic health problems and Adele.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown voice cloning technology , Unknown deepfake technology , Scam-linked e-commerce platforms for Glyco Balance and Keto Flow + ACV , Meta advertising and content distribution infrastructure , Instagram , Facebook and Affiliate redirect and auto-debit subscription systems used in scam marketing
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1076
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-05-21
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
It started about 18 months ago. It was shocking then and is even more so now.
Listeners, viewers, friends, colleagues and family started to contact me, all with roughly the same question, then and now:
"Is this ad I've seen with you in it …
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
