“Alerta Máxima,” warns Enrique Acevedo in a TikTok video. According to the Mexican-American news anchor for Televisa-Univision, a secret US law has authorized the abduction of children by the government starting on August 11.
The account @news_.today has posted the video nineteen times since July 30, changing the implementation date of the law each time so that it’s always on the eve of enforcement day. One video, posted on Aug 3, reached 3.7 million views. Many viewers appear to have been fooled, sharing prayers seeking protection for their kids in the comments.
Acevedo never recorded the videos. The law doesn’t exist. Instead, an AI avatar of the journalist was used to spread disinformation.
Acevedo told me via WhatsApp that pushing back against this phenomenon “feels like fighting a wildfire with a garden hose. These deepfakes hijack my voice, my image, and - more importantly - the trust I’ve built with audiences over the years. I’m leaning on transparency, calling them out publicly, but the scale of this threat is bigger than any one journalist.”
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