Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg gets ‘deepfake’ treatment in activist ad

The ad comes amid a crescendo of lobbying over landmark antitrust legislation that would prevent the biggest tech companies – Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Meta – from abusing their market dominance. — Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP

An activist group will launch an ad campaign Tuesday featuring a fake video of Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg thanking Congress for failing to take action against the biggest tech companies.

In the ad, an actor playing the top-hatted character from the Monopoly board game morphs into Zuckerberg. He says a piece of antitrust legislation aimed at diminishing the power of the tech giants is "about to fade away.” The footage is a "deepfake,” or a video that uses artificial intelligence to make someone appear to do or say something they didn’t.