Financial scheme targeting Canadians uses manipulated video endorsements

"The government has shown an opportunity for all residents of Canada! Now, no one will be poor," says an October 2, 2023 Facebook post sharing a video of Poilievre in which he appears to promise pensioners can earn $60,000 per month.

Another post from the same day shows the governor of the Bank of Canada with the chyron: "Tiff Macklem made a shocking announcement."

Additional posts show what appears to be a Global News report about Reynolds backing the investment platform. 

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Screenshots taken October 3, 2023 of video ads on Facebook

All the videos claim Canadians are being given special access to a new investing platform that takes advantage of quantum computing and AI.

However, reverse image searches reveal the footage is manipulated.

The video of Macklem is from a November 10, 2022 interview with CBC's Peter Armstrong that focused on inflation.

"Governor Macklem has never made an announcement about earning passive income on CBC, or any other media outlet," said Paul Badertscher, director of media relations for the Bank of Canada, in an October 3 email.

"The Bank of Canada is not encouraging Canadians to invest with any particular company, including Quantum AI."

Chuck Thompson, head of public affairs at the CBC, also confirmed the clip is altered.

"No such segment took place on any CBC platform," he said in an October 3 email.

Meanwhile, the video of Poilievre originally aired on CHCH News (archived here). The interview with Adam Atkinson in March 2023 did not include a discussion of investment opportunities.

"This is 100 percent not the interview, which was of course about Canadian politics," said CHCH News Director Greg O'Brien in an October 3 email. "It's very scary that they have stolen our anchor's voice and Mr Poilievre's voice."

As for the video of Reynolds discussing investment opportunities, a spokeswoman for Corus, Global News's parent company, said the clip "did not appear on our airwaves."

The original footage comes from the Netflix program "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman."

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Screenshot of a Facebook post taken October 3, 2023

There are other clues the ads are not genuine:

• The links in the posts do not lead to websites for AI investing. One is hawking bridesmaid dresses.
• The speech is not synchronized with the speakers' lips, a characteristic of deepfake videos. 

A deepfake is a piece of synthetic media altered using AI. The process involves taking a genuine image, audio or video, synthesizing the data and then using it to create a new piece of content that mimics the original's characteristics.

Another ad campaign falsely linked billionaire Elon Musk to a similar investment opportunity. AFP has also debunked deepfakes promoting phony oil investment opportunities to Canadians.