Inside the influencer nightmare of being cloned for deepfake ads: ‘It’s you, but you know it’s not you’

Karen Flowers, a 49-year-old beauty influencer based in Virginia, was recently sent a YouTube ad by her cousin. The clip featured an entity who looked just like Flowers promoting a life insurance company, but it wasn’t actually her. It was a deepfake made using her likeness. “[My cousin] said, ‘I’m looking at it. It’s you. But I know it’s not you,'” Flowers, the founder of Curl House, a line of holistic hair-care products, told The Post. “Clearly, it was my image. I looked at it and knew exactly what YouTube video it came from. My lips were synchronized with the words, but it didn’t sound like me.” Rogue gangs in far-off countries are stealing the images of social media stars and repurposing them for their own purposes — often to create fabricated ads for products they’ve never heard of. I