Artificial intelligence Deepfakes are impersonating pastors to try to fool their congregations

Father Mike Schmitz A Catholic priest and podcaster addressed his congregation, which has more than 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube, last November with an unusual kind of sermon. You can’t always trust the words that come out of his mouth, because sometimes they weren’t really his words, or his mouth, Schmitz said. Schmitz became the target of AI-generated impersonation scams.

“You are being watched by a demonic human being,” the fake Schmitz said in one video that the real Schmitz, who was wearing an L.L. Bean jacket over his religious suit, included in the public service announcement as an example. “You have to act fast, because we’ve already run out of places to send prayers,” said another fake Schmitz, a looming hourglass behind him. “The next trip will not take place until four months later.” The fake Schmitz appeared somewhat robotic as he urged viewers to click on the link and get their blessing before it’s too late.

“I can look at them and say, ‘That’s ridiculous, I would never say that,'” the real Schmitz, who resides in Duluth, Minnesota, said in his video. “But people can’t necessarily tell. That’s a problem. It’s a really big problem.”

In Schmitz’s real video, some of the top comments from his followers said they had seen other prominent Catholic figures impersonated through AI videos, including the Pope. According to cybersecurity expert Rachel Toback, who is CEO of SocialProof Security, that’s because pastors have become an extremely popular subject of AI scams and other deceptive media.

“If you’re on TikTok or Reels, they’ve probably come across your For You page,” Toback says. “This is a person who appears to be a priest, all dressed up, standing on a pulpit or a stage or whatever you might call it, and he seems to be speaking to his congregation in a very passionate way.”

Pastors and ministers in Birmingham, Alabama, Freeport, New York, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, have warned their congregations about artificial intelligence scams impersonating them in the form of direct messages, calls and deepfakes. Alan Beauchamp, a pastor in the Ozarks, said his Facebook account was hacked, with the hacker posting a fake, possibly AI-generated, certificate for cryptocurrency trading with Beauchamp’s name and a comment urging his congregation to join him. A large church in the Philippines has received reports of fake photos showing its pastors. An evangelical church in Nebraska issued an AI “scammer alert” on Facebook, and a churchgoer posted in the comments a screenshot of texts purporting to be from one of its pastors.

It doesn’t help that many pastors and ministers who have gained large online followings often ask for donations and sell things, but not the same things that AI impersonators do. With the help of social media, religious authority figures have been able to reach believers outside their neighborhoods, but the proliferation of content featuring their images and voices has also provided the perfect opportunity for fraudsters using generative AI tools.

“You get a phone call that sounds like they’re a pastor or a board member, or somebody who’s been livestreaming every week, and their voice can be sampled and put into the AI,” a member of ChurchTrac, a Florida-based church management software company, said in a YouTube video warning of the rise of AI scams targeting churches. “The scammer can use that voice and call the church and say, ‘Hey, can you transfer this amount to this account?’”