Source: Radio New Zealand
An AI-generated falsely showing Westpac CEO Catherine McGrath clashing with Winston Peters on a news show. Supplied
One of the country’s biggest banks is calling on social media giant Meta – owner of Facebook and Instagram – to do more to protect New Zealanders from fraud and scams on its platforms.
An AI-generated ‘deepfake’ image portraying Westpac chief executive Catherine McGrath clashing with NZ First leader Winston Peters has been circulating on social media in recent weeks.
Earlier this month the Financial Markets Authority warned consumers about scammers using deepfake news articles to lure consumers onto fake trading platforms.
“I got an e-mail from one of the team that said it’s been used, and then I started to get inbound traffic from others saying ‘it looks like you’ve been the victim of some AI deepfake’,” McGrath told Morning Report on Thursday.
“I thought that they’d done a good job of making me look angry in a way that I’ve never seen myself.. if you knew me, you knew that would never happen. If you didn’t know me, though, it’s easy clickbait.
“And the thing that was really concerning is that it was clicking through to an investment scam, and it’s the investment scam that does the damage to many New Zealanders. And we want to see more from Meta to protect New Zealanders from scams.”
In 2024, a Taranaki grandmother lost $224,000 to scammers after being duped by an AI-generated deepfake video of Christopher Luxon on Facebook encouraging superannuitants to invest in cryptocurrency. Last year a pharmacist found herself appearing in Facebook ads selling fake weight-loss meds.
Sometimes fake ads are taken down after being reported to Meta, only to reappear, slightly altered, the next day.
McGrath said Westpac tried contacting Meta via four different routes, and never got a response. The scam advert was eventually pulled, possibly due to the involvement of the Financial Markets Authority, McGrath said – but without any response she could not be sure.
“What we’d really like them to do is to verify that when they’re taking money from advertisers for financial services, that they need to actually confirm that it’s a financial services firm that they’re taking the advertising revenue from. And we’d love them to act faster when they’re notified.”
She said a direct channel from banks’ financial crimes teams to Meta would be ideal.
“Their own reports talk about how much money that they make. And I think it’s a lot easier for them to verify that when they’re taking money from an advertiser they actually do sell the services that they provide, than it is for me to identify that when you’re making a payment that you genuinely think is to the right person that you want to make…
“We’d like to see Meta step up and do more.”
She said it was surprising that Meta ghosted Westpac’s attempts to notify them of a scam running on their platforms.
“When I get emails from customers, they tend to go to the top of my list – so not having any confirmation that says ‘we’ve actually taken action’ I think is unhelpful. And you feel like, you want to hear that somebody’s taken action.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
