CBS News – Dr. Joel Bervell, a physician known to his hundreds of thousands of followers on social media as the “Medical Mythbuster,” has built a reputation for debunking false health claims online.
Earlier this year, some of those followers alerted him to a video on another account featuring a man who looked exactly like him. The face was his. The voice was not.
“I just felt mostly scared,” Bervell told CBS News. “It looked like me. It didn’t sound like me… but it was promoting a product that I’d never promoted in the past, in a voice that wasn’t mine.”
It was a deepfake – one example of content that features fabricated medical professionals and is reaching a growing audience, according to cybersecurity experts. The video with Bervell’s likeness appeared on multiple platforms – TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, he said.
A CBS News investigation over the past month found dozens of accounts and more than 100 videos across social media sites in which fictitious doctors, some using the identities of real physicians, gave advice or tried to sell products, primarily related to beauty, wellness and weight loss.
Most of them were found on TikTok and Instagram, and some of them were viewed millions of times.
Most videos reviewed by CBS News were trying to sell products, either through independent websites or well-known online marketplaces. They often made bold claims. One video touted a product “96% more effective than Ozempic.”
Cybersecurity company ESET also recently investigated this kind of content. It spotted more than 20 accounts on TikTok and Instagram using AI-generated doctors to push products, according to Martina López, a security researcher at ESET.
“Whether it’s due to some videos going viral or accounts gaining more followers, this type of content is reaching an increasingly wider audience,” she said …
