Father Mike Schmitz, Catholic priest and podcaster, he addressed his congregation over 1.2 million YouTube subscribers in November by delivering an extraordinary homily. You can’t always trust the words coming out of his mouth, Schmitz said, because sometimes they weren’t actually his words – or his mouth. Schmitz has been targeted by AI-generated impersonation scams.
“There’s a demonic man watching you,” said the fraudulent Schmitz in one of the videos, which the real Schmitz, wearing an LL Bean jacket over a government suit, was featured as an example in his public service announcement. “You have to act quickly, because places to send prayers are running out,” said another fraudulent Schmitz with an hourglass looming behind him. “And the next trip won’t be for another four months.” The fraudulent Schmitz sounded a bit robotic as he urged viewers to click the link and secure their blessing before it was too overdue.
“I can look at them and say, ‘That’s ridiculous, I would never say that,’” said the real Schmitz, who lives in Duluth, Minnesota. his explainer video. “But people can’t necessarily tell. That’s a problem. It’s a really big problem.”
In the case of Schmitz’s real video, some of his supporters’ top comments claimed they had seen other prominent Catholic figures impersonating themselves via AI videos, including the pope. According to cybersecurity expert Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security, this is because pastors have become extremely popular targets for scams based on artificial intelligence and other dishonest media.
“If you use TikTok or Reels, they’ve probably come across your For You page,” Tobac says. “He’s someone who appears to be a priest, who has all his robes on, who stands on the pulpit or on the stage or whatever you want to call it, and he appears to be speaking to his congregation in a very enthusiastic way.”
Pastors and ministers in BirminghamAlabama, FreeportFresh York i Fort Lauderdalein Florida are warning their followers about AI-based scams impersonating them in the form of chats, phone calls and deepfakes. Alan Beauchamp, a pastor from the Ozarks, announced this on his Facebook account was hackedwith the hacker posting a fraudulent, possibly AI-generated cryptocurrency trading certificate bearing Beauchamp’s name and a signature encouraging his followers to join him. Megachurch in the Philippines reports received deepfakes of their pastors. An Evangelical Church in Nebraska has issued an artificial intelligence “scammer alert.” on Facebookand one of the faithful posted a screenshot of texts allegedly coming from one of his pastors in the comments.
It doesn’t facilitate that many pastors and clergy who have built gigantic followings online are often actually soliciting donations and selling things, but not the same things as their AI impersonators. Through social media, religious figures have been able to reach believers far beyond their neighborhoods, but the proliferation of content featuring their likenesses and voices has also created a golden opportunity for fraudsters using generative artificial intelligence tools.