← Incidents
ClosedSeverity: High
AI-Generated Scams Mimicking Real News
Declared
April 17, 2025
Closed
April 24, 2025
Duration
7 days
updates
3
Surge in AI-generated advertisements masquerading as legitimate Canadian news sources (particularly CBC and CTV), linked to cryptocurrency scams. Ads originated from multiple countries (Iceland, Czechia, India, US) targeting Canadian audiences with politically charged, divisive content during the 2025 federal election. Increased in volume, political nature, and sophistication over the election period.
Timeline
The incident demonstrated the rapid escalation possible with AI-generated disinformation: within one week, a financial scam campaign evolved into a politically targeted influence operation. The sophistication of the synthetic media — convincing deepfakes of CBC and CTV presenters — represents a significant step change in accessible disinformation tooling. Platform ad review systems failed to detect the synthetic content at scale.