Audio deepfakes: Celebrity-endorsed giveaway scams and fraudulent investment opportunities flood social media platforms

Bitdefender Labs documents a large-scale social-media scam campaign that leverages AI voice cloning to create celebrity and public-figure deepfake ads promoting fake giveaways and investment schemes; these ads on Meta platforms redirect victims to fraudulent websites to harvest personal and payment data, with indicators of targeted reach across the US and Europe (including localized Romanian variants). The report explains the voice-cloning workflow, provides examples and screenshots, notes evasive behaviors (query-parameter gated redirects), estimates reach, and offers user-focused protection and reporting recommendations.