As John Mearsheimer’s deepfake videos mushroomed on YouTube, the American academic rushed to remove them, embarking on a grueling fight that laid bare the challenges of combating AI-powered phishing.
The international relations academic spent months pressuring the Google-owned platform to remove hundreds of deepfakes, an uphill battle that serves as a warning to professionals vulnerable to misinformation and identity theft in the age of artificial intelligence.
In recent months, Mearsheimer’s office at the University of Chicago identified 43 YouTube channels that promoted AI fabrications using his likeness, some depicting him making controversial comments about heated geopolitical rivalries.
A fabricated clip, which also appeared on TikTok, purported to show the academic commenting on Japan’s strained relations with China after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi expressed support for Taiwan in November.
Another realistic AI clip, with a Mandarin voiceover aimed at a Chinese audience, purported to show Mearsheimer claiming that American credibility and influence were weakening in Asia as Beijing advanced.
“This is a terribly disturbing situation, as these videos are fake and designed to give viewers the feeling that they are real,” Mearsheimer said. AFP.
“It undermines the notion of open and honest discourse, which we so desperately need and which YouTube is supposed to facilitate.”
Central to the fight was what Mearsheimer’s office described as a slow and cumbersome process that prevents channels from being reported for infringement unless the targeted individual’s name or image appears in their title, description or avatar.
As a result, his office was forced to submit individual takedown requests for each deepfake video, a laborious process that required a dedicated employee.
‘AI Scale Manufacturing’
Even then, the system failed to stop the spread. New AI channels continued to emerge, some slightly altering their names, such as calling themselves “John Mearsheimer,” to evade scrutiny and removal.
“The biggest problem is that [YouTube] they don’t stop new channels from popping up dedicated to posting AI-generated videos of me,” Mearsheimer said.
After months of back and forth (and what Mearsheimer described as a “herculean” effort), YouTube shut down 41 of the 43 identified channels.
But the takedowns came only after many deepfake clips gained significant traction, and the risk of them resurfacing still remains.
“AI scales the fabrication itself. When someone can generate a convincing image of you in seconds, the damage is not just the image. It is the collapse of denial. The burden of proof shifts to the victim,” said Vered Horesh of AI startup Bria. AFP.
“Security cannot be a process of elimination: it has to be a product requirement.”
In its response, a YouTube spokesperson said it was committed to building “AI technology that powers human creativity responsibly” and that it enforced its policies “consistently” for all creators, regardless of their use of AI.
In his recent annual letter outlining YouTube’s priorities for 2026, CEO Neal Mohan wrote that the platform is “actively building” its systems to reduce the spread of “AI waste” (low-quality visual content) while planning to dramatically expand AI tools for its creators.
“Big headache”
Mearsheimer’s experience highlights a new Internet rife with deception, where rapid advances in generative AI distort shared realities and allow anonymous scammers to target professionals with public profiles.
Hoaxes produced with inexpensive AI tools can often go undetected, fooling unsuspecting viewers.
In recent months, doctors have been impersonated to sell fake medical products, CEOs to sell fraudulent financial advice, and academics to fabricate opinions for agenda-driven actors in geopolitical rivalries.
Mearsheimer said he planned to launch his own YouTube channel to help protect users from deepfakes impersonating him.
Reflecting that approach, Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist and professor at Columbia University, recently announced the launch of his own channel in response to “the extraordinary proliferation of fake AI-generated videos of me” on the platform.
“The YouTube process is difficult to navigate and generally completely complicated,” Sachs said. AFP.
“There continues to be a proliferation of counterfeits, and it is not easy for my office to track them, or even notice them until they have been with us for a while. This is a significant and ongoing headache,” he added.
