Singaporean actor-director Aaron Aziz has lodged a police report against four social media accounts for generating his voice using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to sell T-shirts.
The 48-year-old, who is based in Malaysia, also filed a report with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).
He told Malaysian media that this is “unlike a normal crime case” as after he submitted the report at the police station, he was referred to MCMC to file another.
“It’s a very tedious process as they need some time to track down the (scammers’) IP addresses,” he said, as reported by Malaysian publication, Malay Mail.
He added that both reports were filed on Mar 11 and he is currently waiting for updates.
Aaron shared that his first encounter with the scam was a TikTok video that used a photo of him and his AI-generated voice to sell polo T-shirts.
“They were selling the T-shirts for RM1 (S$0.28). It doesn’t make sense, and it is my name that is affected as people think I’m the one selling it,” he said.
He shared that while the video was removed after he reached out to the user, it started to resurface.
Besides that, he added that he had sent a representative to the T-shirt manufacturers only to be told that it would be hard to track the culprits down as they were operating through many agents and affiliates.
The actor added that he hoped to “see faster action from MCMC” and that a “special unit” would be formed to tackle such cases as other personalities have also been affected.
