The Tony Stewart household has been a major topic of discussion in the NASCAR world lately, with rumors circulating about the former Cup Series driver’s potential return to oval track racing. With Dodge joining the Truck Series through its ‘RAM’ brand and fielding five entries, many feel that one of the seats might go to Stewart, given his personal links with Dodge via the NHRA Top Fuel discipline.
While this has been the major talking point in recent days, this time it is Stewart’s wife, Leah Pruett, who’s making the headlines, thanks to an online scam that’s exploiting her image.
Tony Stewart’s Wife Becomes the Center of an AI Scam
In the digital era of scams, stars across entertainment, politics, and sports have been targeted by AI scams to promote fake products and other fraudulent activities. The likes of Pedro Sanchez, Rafael Nadal, Taylor Swift, Lamine Yamal, and many more have faced deepfake frauds, and the Stewart house has just become its latest scapegoat.
The scammers utilize new-age technology to clone voices and personas, making users feel like they are dealing with a real person, and then push fake products to profit from them. They blur reality to fool fans, who end up spending money in the name of their favorite celebs and athletes, and Pruett has just warned her fans against falling for the scheme.
Taking to her Instagram stories recently, Pruett made it clear that everyone who thought they were speaking to her online was actually falling victim to yet another AI scam. She further wrote that she takes days, if not months, to reply to most messages, with the only exceptions being her family and very close friends.
She wrote, “Scammers using AI at it again! I’ma make it reeeal easy for anyone thinking they’re ‘talking’ to me online… you’re not. You’re just not. I love my husband, my family, and take 3-5 business days or months to answer back to anything except family or anything racing or true friend related.”
The story update came as a follow-up to one of Pruett’s contacts sending her a screenshot of the deepfake scam, where the racing driver is shown holding a piece of paper that “confirms” the fact that she is indeed real.
The message on the paper reads, “Hello. It’s me, Leah Pruett. I’m just proving this to you that I’m the real Leah Pruett.” Meanwhile, the name of the person/organization using Pruett’s identity was redacted by the sender.
Notably, this isn’t the first time Stewart’s wife has been the center of an online scam, given that a similar incident occurred in August last year.
Back then, she warned people against the use of deepfake voice calls, in which scammers pretended to be someone familiar and called people, asking for monetary help. She shared a video on an AI voice scam by content creator Tracey Jo Rose, who enacted a scenario depicting how these scams work.
Subsequently, Pruett revealed that something similar had happened to her, as she discovered that the AI scammers were using her voice to communicate with fans and solicit money.
That said, it is becoming increasingly harder in today’s world to separate the real from the fake, and fans need to stay up-to-date with their favorite celebs’ updates to determine whether they are falling for these scams.
With rumors swirling around a potential NASCAR comeback for Stewart, the deepfake AI scam could have proven to be the undoing of a potential famous comeback, but Pruett was quick to clear the air over it all.
