Purported Deepfake Reportedly Impersonated Consumer Adviser Clark Howard to Promote Auto-Insurance Quote Site

A purported AI-generated video reportedly circulated on social media depicting consumer adviser Clark Howard endorsing an auto-insurance quote tool. A viewer reportedly said she believed it was real and warned others after a similar site led to an alleged flood of unsolicited calls without better rates.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 4 Malicious actors
• Primary risk subdomain: 4.3 Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation

The incident involves malicious actors using AI-generated deepfakes of a trusted consumer adviser to run an insurance scam, which falls under fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation.

Causal factors

• Entity: Human
• Intent: Intentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The incident was caused by human actors intentionally using deployed AI deepfake generation tools to create deceptive videos for commercial fraud.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Risk Level 3: Limited Risk. The report describes 'AI-created deepfakes' used to impersonate a real person, which falls under the category of AI-generated content requiring transparency obligations under the EU AI Act.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: None named
• AI purpose: Deepfake Video Generation; Voice Generation
• Behaviour type: Tool
• Alleged developer: Unknown voice cloning technology developers, Unknown deepfake technology developers
• Alleged deployer: Unknown scammers impersonating Clark Howard, Unknown scammers
• Alleged harmed parties: General public, Epistemic integrity, Dianne Milton, Consumers seeking auto insurance, Consumers, Clark Howard

Harm severity

Severity ratings are based on this scale.

Highest direct severity in any category: Minor. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Privacy: direct Negligible, indirect Minor
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Minor
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Malicious content

Reported: The report explicitly describes the creation and distribution of malicious deepfake videos on social media.

Directly caused: Malicious actors created and posted deepfake videos of a consumer adviser to deceive social media users into using a scam insurance tool.

Inferred additional harm: It is likely that multiple variations of these deepfake ads were distributed across various social media platforms, exposing thousands of users to deceptive content.

Privacy

Reported: The report does not explicitly describe privacy violations, though it mentions users receiving unsolicited calls after inputting their data.

Indirectly caused: A user who entered her information on the promoted website immediately started receiving unsolicited calls from numerous unknown parties.

Inferred additional harm: The scam website likely harvested and sold personal data of numerous victims without their consent, violating their privacy.

Epistemic

Reported: The report explicitly describes epistemic harm through the generation of highly convincing fake video evidence.

Directly caused: The AI-generated deepfake fabricated a video of a trusted consumer adviser giving bad advice and endorsing a scam tool, misleading viewers.

Indirectly caused: The adviser noted that 'it is hard to tell what is real and what is not,' indicating an erosion of trust in digital media.

Inferred additional harm: Widespread dissemination of such deepfakes likely contributes to a general decline in public trust in video evidence and legitimate consumer advice.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 3
• People reportedly exposed: 3

Potential causes

Management

• Inadequate Risk Mitigation: Platforms prioritize ad revenue over proactively scanning for deepfake scams.

Technology

• Ease of Deepfake Creation: AI tools make it highly accessible and simple to generate realistic fakes.
• High Realism of AI Avatars: Deepfakes are realistic enough to easily deceive average social media users.

Data Inputs

• Use of Public Voice and Video: Publicly available media of trusted figures is used to train deepfakes.

Human Factors

• User Trust in Public Figures: People trust advice from recognized figures, making them vulnerable to scams.
• Difficulty in Verifying Authenticity: Audiences struggle to distinguish real videos from AI-generated deepfakes.

Process and Methods

• Inadequate Ad Screening: Social media platforms lack robust verification to block deepfake scam ads.

Regulatory Environment

• Lack of Deepfake Regulations: Absence of strict policies or laws governing AI-generated deceptive ads.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The reports clearly describe the nature of the incident, the specific harm (impersonation, spam calls, deception), and the technology used (deepfakes). There is little ambiguity regarding the events, though the specific AI model used is not identified.
• Ambiguities identified: The exact website and the specific AI tools used to generate the deepfakes are not named.

This incident involves the use of AI-generated deepfakes to impersonate a local television consumer adviser for a commercial insurance scam. While demonstrating the increasing ease of creating convincing synthetic media, the incident is a localized cybercrime and fraud issue with minor national security implications, manageable under standard law enforcement and consumer protection frameworks.

• Overall national security impact: Minor
• Scope: Single nation
• Primary target: United States
• Alleged perpetrator: Unknown

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. The incident represents an ongoing strategic concern regarding the proliferation of deceptive AI tools rather than an active national security crisis.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. The AI system was utilized as a static content-generation tool by human actors who directed the creation and distribution of the deepfake videos.
• Novelty: Established threat. The use of synthetic media and deepfakes for commercial scams and identity impersonation is an established and recurring threat method.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. No physical systems, critical infrastructure, or kinetic assets were targeted or affected in this commercial fraud incident.
• Information security: Minor. Involves AI-generated deepfake impersonation of a local media figure, representing a minor information security threat limited to localized commercial fraud.
• Sovereignty: Negligible. No core government operations, electoral systems, or sovereign state authority were compromised by this consumer-focused scam.
• Economic security: Minor. Minor economic impact restricted to localized consumer fraud and data harvesting, with no threat to strategic industries or financial systems.
• Societal stability: Minor. Causes localized epistemic harm and privacy violations for targeted individuals, but poses no large-scale threat to social cohesion or civil liberties.