Purported Deepfake Facebook Advertisement Reportedly Used Bulgarian Actor, Director, and Playwright Kamen Donev's Likeness to Market Joint-Pain Product

A reportedly AI-manipulated Facebook advertisement appeared to repurpose footage of Bulgarian actor, director, and playwright Kamen Donev, allegedly overlaying fabricated audio and altered lip movements to market a purported joint-pain product. The ad reportedly linked to a presumably fabricated article imitating a Bulgarian news outlet and to an online sales funnel for a product described as unavailable through pharmacies.

Risk classification

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

The incident involves the use of AI-generated deepfakes to impersonate public figures and falsely endorse products for financial gain, which constitutes fraud and targeted manipulation.

Additional risk subdomains

• 3.1 False or misleading information: The campaign generated and spread false medical claims and fabricated news articles to mislead consumers.

Causal factors

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

The incident was caused by malicious human actors who intentionally deployed AI voice and video manipulation tools post-deployment to execute a financial scam.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Risk Level 3. Limited Risk: The report describes the creation and distribution of deepfakes, which are subject to transparency obligations under the EU AI Act to ensure users are aware they are interacting with AI-generated content.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: ElevenLabs, unspecified (ElevenLabs)
• AI purpose: Voice Generation; Deepfake Video Generation
• Behaviour type: Tool
• Alleged developer: Unknown voice cloning technology developers, Unknown deepfake technology developers
• Alleged deployer: Unknown scammers
• Alleged harmed parties: People seeking medical advice, Kamen Donev, General public of Bulgaria, General public, Epistemic integrity

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 Negligible
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Malicious content

Reported: Yes, the report describes deepfake videos and fabricated articles created to deceive users.

Directly caused: The malicious actors created deepfake videos of Kamen Donev and other celebrities, along with a fake article mimicking Fakti.bg, to promote a joint-pain product.

Inferred additional harm: The deepfake videos were distributed as sponsored ads on Facebook, potentially reaching thousands of users in Bulgaria.

Epistemic

Reported: Yes, the report describes the fabrication of news articles and celebrity endorsements.

Directly caused: The campaign fabricated statements from Kamen Donev and other celebrities, and created a fake website mimicking the Bulgarian news outlet Fakti.bg to spread false information.

Inferred additional harm: This campaign contributes to the erosion of public trust in online media and video evidence by demonstrating how easily credible figures and outlets can be simulated.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 6
• People reportedly exposed: 6

Potential causes

Management

• Facebook Ad Monetization Priorities: Platform prioritized ad revenue over rigorous pre-screening of sponsored ads.
• Inadequate Impersonation Oversight: Lack of proactive policies to protect public figures from identity theft.

Technology

• AI Deepfake Voice Generation: ElevenLabs or similar tools enabled high-accuracy voice cloning of actors.
• Video Lip-Sync Manipulation: AI manipulated mouth movements to match the fabricated audio tracks.

Data Inputs

• Unauthorized Media Scraping: TV appearances of celebrities were harvested to train and feed AI models.

Human Factors

• Exploitation of Public Trust: Scammers leveraged the high public reputation of well-known Bulgarian figures.
• Consumer Vulnerability: Targets with joint pain were easily misled by trusted celebrity endorsements.

Process and Methods

• Inadequate Ad Moderation: Facebook's sponsored ad screening failed to detect deepfakes before publication.
• Spoofed Media Websites: Creating fake clones of Fakti.bg to deceive users into buying products.

Regulatory Environment

• Lack of Deepfake Ad Controls: Insufficient regulatory enforcement on social networks regarding deepfake ads.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The fact-checking report from Factcheck.bg provides clear, verified details about the deepfake nature of the videos, the specific celebrities targeted, the platform used for distribution (Facebook), and the verification tool used (ElevenLabs Audio Detection). The mechanics of the scam are well-documented.
• Ambiguities identified: The exact AI generation tools used to create the deepfakes are not explicitly named, though ElevenLabs' detection tool was used to verify the audio.

A localized deepfake scam campaign in Bulgaria used AI-generated video and cloned voices of public figures to sell unverified medical products. While demonstrating the ease of synthetic media creation, the incident is a commercial fraud scheme with negligible national security implications.

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

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. Represents an ongoing, low-level fraudulent threat rather than an active national security crisis requiring immediate response.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. Malicious actors manually generated and deployed the deepfake advertisements; the AI did not act autonomously.
• Novelty: Established threat. Deepfakes used for commercial scamming and impersonation of public figures are an established threat method.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. No kinetic threats, critical infrastructure compromise, or mass casualty potential were identified in this incident.
• Information security: Minor. Uses deepfakes to impersonate public figures, but the primary intent is commercial fraud rather than systematic state-sponsored information warfare or intelligence compromise.
• Sovereignty: Negligible. No disruption to state authority, electoral systems, or core government decision-making processes was reported.
• Economic security: Negligible. The incident is limited to a localized commercial scam targeting individual consumers, with no threat to strategic industries or financial system stability.
• Societal stability: Minor. Involves unauthorized use of celebrity likenesses and potential health risks from unverified medical products, but lacks the scale of mass surveillance or systemic human rights violations.