Polish billionaire Rafal Brzoska won an injunction temporarily banning Meta Platforms Inc from publishing fake ads that use images of him or his wife Omena Mensah in Poland.
Brzoska, the founder and chief executive officer of Amsterdam-listed InPost SA parcel locker company, said in an interview that the Polish Personal Data Protection Office’s three-month ban announced last week on ads that use images of him or his wife to lure people into fraudulent investment platforms was only the beginning.
“It will be the long battle, and I want to find out how big are revenues from ads that use deepfakes for fraudulent purposes,” Brzoska said in an interview. He added he wants to convince other well-known Poles to take action to bolster the case and pressure Meta to better differentiate fakes from legitimate content.
Meta is facing increasing pressure around the world over the proliferation of scams that use generative artificial intelligence tools and the likenesses of famous people to attract victims. A US judge this year ruled that Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest could sue the Facebook and Instagram parent over the use of his image to fraudulently endorse cryptocurrency products despite a legal shield that protects social media companies from being held liable for user content.
A Meta spokesperson said the company removes false content when it is found and is assessing Polish regulator’s decision.
Brzoska called the Polish regulator’s decision the first such move in the European Union based on the bloc’s data protection rules. He said he will now wait to see if the Irish Data Protection Commission, which oversees Facebook’s European headquarters in Dublin, picks up the injunction before deciding on what jurisdiction to sue in.
For now, Brzoska said the injunction has not stopped new examples of fraudulently using images of him and Mensah, a local television celebrity.
“I’m currently spending plenty of time unwinding deepfakes,” he said. “Someone should be responsible for propagation of criminal actions.” – Bloomberg
