If you’ve been on TikTok lately, you might have been served a video advertisement featuring Joe Rogan and one of his guests on his immensely popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. In the clip, Rogan boasts about a “libido booster for men” supplement called Alpha Grind, going so far as to tell listeners exactly what to type in to find the product on Amazon.
Rogan is one of the most popular podcasters out there, with over ten million listeners per episode of his show. A brand endorsement like that would be a big get and likely a very expensive one for any product. Only Joe Rogan did not endorse Alpha Grind on his show. The clip featured in the TikTok video ad is a likely
The video ad was posted and promoted on TikTok by a user going by the name @mikesmithtrainer. When Mashable first reviewed the TikTok account, the publicly posted videos consisted of testimonial clips of supposed everyday Alpha Grind consumers. As of publishing time, the
A TikTok spokesperson confirmed to Mashable that the company “removed these videos under our harmful misinformation policy.” TikTok also banned the account.
On Twitter, user @JimmyFarley00
When first confronted with the suspected deepfake Rogan video, some Twitter users didn’t even realize what they were looking out for at first. Andrew D. Huberman, the guest on Rogan’s podcast who is also featured in the video,
“They created a false conversation,” Huberman explained in the replies to the clip. “We were talking about something very different.”
In the clip, it’s clear that some parts of the conversation are lifted from the podcast. The video is heavily edited and takes bits and pieces from the actual episode. The clip then also weaves what is likely completely fabricated AI deepfake audio and footage of Rogan endorsing the Alpha Grind product during their conversation, which — pending analysis from an expert — would mean the hoaxer used machine learning to replicate Rogan’s voice and paired that with deceptive video editing or additional AI fakery to match-up his facial features to what he’s saying.
Deepfakes aren’t new and have been
TikTok actually
It should be noted that not all deepfakes are used for nefarious purposes, and that the technology can be used for creative videos meant to simply entertain viewers. However, deepfakes have been consistently thrust into the spotlight for their more negative use cases. Just last month, a popular Twitch streamer went viral after he mistakenly
Mashable has reached out to TikTok for more information on the Joe Rogan TikTok ad and the removal of the account that posted it. We will update this piece when we hear back.