Alleged Deepfake Video Falsely Depicts Hollywood Stars in AI-Manipulated Protest Against Kanye West

A deepfake video allegedly depicted Scarlett Johansson, Jerry Seinfeld, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Steven Spielberg, Adam Sandler, Sacha Baron Cohen, Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Lenny Kravitz, Adam Levine, Drake, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Black, Mila Kunis, Ben Stiller, and Woody Allen protesting Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks. The video falsely attributed statements to them, using AI to manipulate their likenesses without consent.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 4 Malicious actors
• Primary risk subdomain: 4.1 Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale

The incident involved the intentional creation and viral dissemination of a deepfake video featuring unauthorized celebrity likenesses to influence public opinion at scale.

Additional risk subdomains

• 6.3 Economic and cultural devaluation of human effort: The unauthorized replication of celebrity likenesses and identities devalues their personal and professional creative control.
• 3.1 False or misleading information: The deepfake video generated false information by misleading the public into believing the depicted celebrities had participated in the campaign.

Causal factors

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

The incident was caused by human creators who intentionally used post-deployment generative AI tools to create and distribute the unauthorized deepfake video.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Limited Risk: The incident involves AI-generated content such as deepfakes, which are subject to transparency obligations under the Act to ensure users are aware they are interacting with or viewing AI-generated media.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: unspecified
• AI purpose: Deepfake Video Generation; Voice Generation
• Behaviour type: Tool
• Alleged developer: Unknown deepfake technology developers
• Alleged deployer: Ori Bejerano, Guy Bar, Gitam BBDO
• Alleged harmed parties: Woody Allen, Steven Spielberg, Scarlett Johansson, Sacha Baron Cohen, Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Mark Zuckerberg, Lisa Kudrow, Lenny Kravitz, Jerry Seinfeld, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jack Black, Drake, David Schwimmer, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Adam Levine

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: The report explicitly describes the creation and spread of unauthorized deepfake content depicting celebrities making offensive gestures.

Directly caused: The creators generated and distributed a deepfake video featuring unauthorized likenesses of over a dozen celebrities making a middle-finger gesture.

Epistemic

Reported: The report explicitly describes epistemic harm through the fabrication of celebrity endorsements and statements.

Directly caused: The video misled members of the public and media into believing that these Jewish celebrities had actually participated in a coordinated campaign against Kanye West.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 15
• People reportedly exposed: 15

Potential causes

Management

• Weak Corporate Ethics Oversight: Creative agencies fail to restrict employees from using non-consensual AI.
• Prioritizing Outreach Over Safety: Creators focused on campaign impact rather than ethical AI guidelines.

Technology

• Accessible Deepfake Tools: Generative AI tools make it easy to replicate realistic human likenesses.
• Lack of Technical Guardrails: AI systems lack built-in blocks to prevent unauthorized celebrity generation.

Data Inputs

• Unauthorized Likeness Data: Celebrity photos and videos used as training data without explicit consent.

Human Factors

• Deliberate Non-Consensual Use: Creators intentionally used celebrity faces for an activist campaign.
• Public Vulnerability to Fakes: Audiences struggle to distinguish realistic AI deepfakes from reality.

Process and Methods

• Reactive Platform Moderation: Social networks rely on post-upload labeling rather than proactive blocking.
• Lack of Consent Verification: No process exists to verify celebrity consent before publishing AI content.

Regulatory Environment

• Paralyzed Legislative Action: The US government has failed to pass federal laws regulating AI deepfakes.
• Weak International Standards: Countries like the US and UK declined to sign international AI declarations.
• Vetoed AI Safety Bills: State-level attempts to regulate AI safety have been vetoed or delayed.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The reports provide consistent, detailed accounts of the deepfake video, its creators, the celebrities depicted, and the public reaction, particularly from Scarlett Johansson. The facts are well-documented across multiple reputable news sources.
• Ambiguities identified: The specific AI tools used to generate the video are not named, though the extraction context identifies OpenAI ChatGPT (likely in reference to Johansson's previous dispute mentioned in the text).

Israeli digital marketers created an unauthorized deepfake video featuring 15 Jewish celebrities protesting Kanye West's antisemitic remarks. While highlighting growing concerns over synthetic media and celebrity likeness rights, the incident has minor national security implications, representing a cultural dispute rather than a coordinated information warfare campaign.

• Overall national security impact: Minor
• Scope: Multiple nations
• Primary target: United States
• Other affected: Israel
• Alleged perpetrator: Guy Bejerano and Guy Bar

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. Represents an ongoing strategic concern regarding the regulation of generative AI and synthetic media, rather than an active national security crisis.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. The AI tool was directly operated by human creators to generate specific video and audio outputs, with no autonomous decision-making.
• Novelty: Established threat. The creation of unauthorized celebrity deepfakes using generative AI is a well-established threat with numerous prior occurrences.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. No physical systems, infrastructure, or human safety threats were involved in this incident.
• Information security: Minor. Involves AI-enhanced synthetic media of celebrities, but it was a localized cultural statement by private individuals rather than a state-sponsored information warfare or intelligence operation.
• Sovereignty: Negligible. No impact on state authority, electoral systems, or core government decision-making processes.
• Economic security: Negligible. No threats to strategic industries, financial systems, or national technological advantages were identified.
• Societal stability: Minor. The incident violates individual likeness rights and contributes to digital trust erosion, but lacks the scale or systemic nature to threaten broader societal stability.