Ukrainian woman found her AI clone in Chinese social networks: she sells Russian goods and praises relations between China and Russia

Olga Loiek, 20, from Ukraine, recently discovered that her dipfakes were being actively circulated on Chinese social media.

Here's What We Know

The girl runs her YouTube-blog and some time ago began to receive messages from subscribers that she was seen in Chinese social networks. Only there she is a Russian woman who speaks Chinese and appears by different names: then Natasha, then Anna, then Grace.

When Olga started translating her dipfake's clips through Google Translate, she was horrified. Her AI clone advertises Russian goods and praises the "good relations" between China and Russia. The avatar also praises Chinese culture and talks about how much Russian women want to marry Chinese men. "If you marry Russian women, we will wash clothes, cook, and wash dishes for you every day. We will also give you foreign babies, as many as you want", the avatar assures.

"This feels very violating", says Olga. Especially since Russia has attacked Ukraine and continues to shell its cities.

The Douyin and Bilibili websites have dozens of such videos, and users are sure it's a real girl. Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, has labelled some of these videos as potentially created by artificial intelligence. And on the Bilibili website, some of the dipfake videos are labelled with the HeyGen logo. It's an artificial intelligence company headquartered in Los Angeles that was launched in China in 2020. It specialises in realistic digital avatars, voice generation and video translation. That said, HeyGen claims to only allow you to create avatars of real people with their consent. Although, of course, no one asked Olga's consent.

The girl and her followers sent complaints to Chinese social networking companies, after which a dozen accounts with her avatar were deleted.

The girl herself told the details of this story in her blog.

Source: Olga Loiek, VOANews