Taylor Swift deepfakes are pushing scams on TikTok now

Scammers have found a new favorite tool: AI-generated celebrity deepfakes. According to authentication company Copyleaks, TikTok is currently hosting ads that use realistic AI avatars of Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and other celebrities to promote shady services.

The ads usually show the celebrities in interview-like settings—red carpets, podcasts, talk shows. Some manipulate real footage with AI to make it look like the star is personally endorsing a rewards program. The pitch? You can earn money by watching TikTok content and giving feedback. Sounds too good to be true? That’s because it is.

TikTok’s official branding appears in some of these ads, which makes them look more legitimate at first glance. But users who click through are redirected to third-party services that ask for personal information. Classic phishing bait, wrapped in a shiny AI package.

One ad features a particularly convincing AI avatar of Taylor Swift urging users to sign up. It’s not just a bad lip-sync job—it’s smooth, the voice matches, the mannerisms are there. If you weren’t paying close attention, you’d probably think it was real. That’s the scary part.

Copyleaks didn’t name specific accounts or provide exact numbers on how many of these ads are floating around, but the pattern is clear: AI-generated celebrity endorsements are becoming the new face of social media scams. And TikTok, despite its content moderation efforts, is struggling to keep up.

This isn’t entirely surprising. Deepfake technology has been getting cheaper and more accessible for years. What used to require a small team and expensive GPUs can now be done with a single off-the-shelf tool and a few hours of work. The barrier to entry for scammers has never been lower.

What’s frustrating is how little platforms seem to be doing about it. TikTok has policies against synthetic media that misleads users, but enforcement is reactive at best. By the time a deepfake ad gets taken down, it’s already been seen by thousands of people. The scam doesn’t need to run for weeks—it just needs to run long enough to harvest a few hundred credit card numbers.

I’ve seen similar scams on YouTube and Facebook over the past couple of years, usually using Elon Musk or Warren Buffett deepfakes to promote crypto schemes. TikTok was probably the next logical target, given its younger, less skeptical user base. But using Taylor Swift and Rihanna feels like a deliberate escalation—these are celebrities with massive, loyal followings who are more likely to trust anything that looks like an official endorsement.

If you see a video of a celebrity offering you easy money on TikTok, assume it’s fake. Report it, don’t click the link, and definitely don’t hand over any personal information. The AI might look real, but the intentions behind it are as old as the internet itself.