Don't Let Oprah's Deepfake Face Convince You To Buy Scammy Weight Loss Gummies.

Also don't buy scammy weight loss gummies from internet ads, period.

Not a deep fake, just my own magnificent Photoshop skills at work.

For years, scammy diet supplement companies have tried to convince innocent players of chintzy cellphone games and readers of the obvious advertising clickbait that appears below actual articles on some non-Wonkette websites that their products are supported by celebrities or that they really wowed the judges on “Shark Tank.” Traditionally, this involved some creative video splicing in which said judges or celebrities would be generically astounded by a product we are to assume is just out of frame.

Not anymore! Because deepfakes exist and these scammy diet supplement companies are now using them to make it look like they are one of Oprah’s favorite things when they are not one of Oprah’s favorite things. Oprah’s favorite things are things like 87 varieties of comfy pants, fancy jams and jellies, a line of teddy bears called Bukowski Bears that are not what I thought they would be, or Lollia, a nice bath product and candle company that I also happen to enjoy (Wish, their sugar pastille scented fragrance, is my jam — here is an Amazon linky for it that we get a cut of), not scammy diet gummies being sold to you while you play Candy Crush on the loo.

Alas, not everyone is going to know that.

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Via ABC:

Laura Guerra says before making an online purchase, she typically does her research. However, when she saw Oprah Winfrey's face associated with a product, her typical wariness went by the wayside.

“I saw Oprah Winfrey on that and thought, 'well, if she backs it, it should be legit.' So I ordered it,” Guerra explained.

She bought one bottle of keto gummies as the website made big promises of weight loss help with, as Guerra thought, the stamp of approval from Oprah herself.

Guerra says the offer was one bottle for $49.

“Until I went to my bank account and it was $258.77 that they had taken," she said after learning she was charged for multiple bottles.

Guerra then tried to return the unopened packages and was promised a refund, which never came (though I do hope she knows she can dispute the charge with her bank). She also contacted her local news station in hopes of warning other customers not to buy stuff just because they slapped Oprah’s face on it.

What’s also disturbing is that the first search results on Google for “keto gummies scam” claims to be a study on the scam from the University of Pittsburgh — with a url that even starts with psychiatry.pitt.edu, the actual domain for the actual university of Pittsburgh’s psychiatry department.

But instead of taking you to a study on the Keto Gummies hoax, it redirects you to this obvious scam page trying to sell you bullshit keto gummies.

Judging by how most CMS’ I’ve worked with work, it is entirely possible that it is part of someone’s job to change the date every day to make it look like an article from that day.

The next several pages that come up in search are also definitely not actually from Yale University.

So they’re scamming people and then setting it up so that the first sites that come up when people try to Google to see if it is a scam are also promoting the scam. It seems like this is the kind of thing Google should correct, no?

Now, Oprah has certainly promoted some nonsense (and the occasional woo purveyor who killed multiple people in a sweat lodge) in the past, but this is not the case here and she has actually been pretty active in terms of letting people know that she is not promoting any keto gummies. She’s also not the only celebrity whose image is being falsely used to endorse these supplements that I am now 90 percent convinced will kill you. Fake AI versions of country singers, like Luke Combs, Lainey Wilson and Tim McGraw have been used to promote them as well.

“The first version of it, you can tell it definitely wasn’t Luke. But the second and third versions, where they kept tweaking the voice, got closer and closer,” Chris Kappy, Combs’ manager, told Rolling Stone back in July. “I know Luke’s speaking voice like the back of my hand, but people I know were falling for it. Then I started having fans email me saying, ‘Hey, I haven’t gotten my gummies yet,’ or asking, ‘Is this real?’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I have to say something.’”

That’s especially creepy when you know these deepfakes aren’t just going to be used to sell scammy gummies or to insert Jerry Seinfeld into episodes of your favorite television shows.

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It seems like this is the kind of thing people should be able to sue over, right? But apparently the rules on that are not especially clear yet. There is, however, bipartisan legislation in both the Senate and the House to change that. In September, US House Rep. Yvette Clarke from New York introduced the Deepfakes Accountability Act, which would actually criminalize certain kinds of deepfakes intended to cause serious harm — for instance, to harass someone, to make pornography, to intentionally incite an armed or diplomatic conflict, to conduct various forms of fraud, etc. — punishing them with a fine or up to five years in prison.

In October, Sens. Chris Coons (D-Delaware), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota), Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) introduced the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act, which would standardize the process for people to file lawsuits companies that use AI versions of them without their permission.

Quite frankly, I don’t know that companies who do this — or that sell “supplements” that are not actually proven to do what they say they do — should be allowed to advertise or even continue selling that product. It’s not as if there is zero regulation of advertising. Alcohol companies are not allowed to target those under 21, tobacco companies are not allowed to run TV ads or most other ads at all, and up until 1997, the FDA regulated direct-to-consumer prescription advertisements, requiring them to list all possible side-effects and other potential issues and making it largely impossible for them to run television ads. Personally, I vote we go back to that!

But in the meantime, there are still scammers out there, so it’s always best to be cynical as hell when making purchases on the internet or anywhere.