By It’s a scam! | Screenshot: Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge
The video is almost convincing: it features Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko announcing a “historic day” for Solana. He thanks the “S-O-L” community and offers a giveaway through a QR code and a website. Sure, he sounds a little robotic — his voice is a monotone, unusual for him — and he hardly makes eye contact with the camera, but it’s a video, and seeing is believing, right?
It’s a fake, of course. And it’s been up on YouTube for a day. Not only that, at least one internet user says they saw it as an ad. It’s not just YouTube, either. The fake video is appearing in ads on the platform formerly known as Twitter and which Elon Musk would prefer you call X.
“There has been a substantial increase in deepfakes and other AI-generated…