Description: A deepfake scam allegedly used AI-generated audio to mimic Maltese Prime Minister Robert Abela and journalist Mark Laurence Zammit, falsely portraying them as endorsing an investment scheme. The fraudulent video repurposed genuine interview footage from 2022 but replaced the original dialogue with AI-generated voices.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown deepfake technology developers and Unknown voice cloning technology developer developed an AI system deployed by scammers , Fraudsters and Scammers impersonating Robert Abela and Mark Laurence Zammit, which harmed Robert Abela , Mark Laurence Zammit and General public of Malta.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown deepfake apps and Unknown voice cloning technology
Incident Stats
Incident ID
935
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-02-17
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
timesofmalta.com · 2025
- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
Claim: Robert Abela and Mark Laurence Zammit are promoting an AI-driven trading platform.
Verdict: Scammers have doctored a genuine interview using an audio deepfake to try to dupe people into signing up for a fraudulent scheme.
A new batch…
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.
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