Eleni StamatoukouAthensBIRNNovember 14, 202516:29Lawsuit accuses unknown administrators of a Facebook page of falsely showing the minister urging citizens to invest in «high-yield» schemes.
Greek Minister of Economy and Finance Kyriakos Pierrakakis, April 2025. Photo: EPA/WILL OLIVER.
The Greek Ministry of Economy and Finance and minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis filed a lawsuit on Friday for deceptive advertising on Facebook against the unknown administrators of a page on the social media platform.
The ministry and Pierrakakis allege that AI was used to create misleading advertising for an investment scheme – an audiovisual ‘deepfake’ of Pierrakakis appearing to promote the scheme.
The material “falsely depicted Minister Pierrakakis urging citizens to invest in supposedly ‘high-yield programmes’,” the ministry said, adding that “it has no relation to reality”.
Greek police have reported before on deceptive advertisements on social media and websites, where supposedly influential figures appear to urge citizens to buy “miracle” medicines or invest in supposedly high-yield cryptocurrencies, gold or oil, while at the same time offering supposedly personal testimonies of how they themselves made significant profits.
In February, Greek police discovered a ring of illegal trafficking of adulterated medicines via the internet, which used deepfake videos with the voice or image of celebrities, such as the well-known doctor Sotiris Tsiodras, the journalist Nikos Hatzinikolaou and the singer Giorgos Dalaras to advertise the medicines.
The EU’s AI Act, the first comprehensive law worldwide to regulate artificial intelligence, classifies deepfakes as limited risk, but considers using AI to influence an election or voting behaviour as high risk.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
