Joe Rogan deepfake video promotes Alpha Grind supplement on TikTok
A deepfake video of Joe Rogan was used in a TikTok advertising campaign to fraudulently promote a supplement brand called Alpha Grind. The account @mikesmithtrainer used AI-generated audio and manipulated video to mislead viewers into believing Rogan endorsed the product.
The hoaxer used machine learning to replicate Rogan's voice and paired that with deceptive video editing or additional AI fakery to match-up his facial features to what he's saying.
Key facts
- What
- A deepfake video of Joe Rogan was used in a TikTok advertising campaign to fraudulently promote a supplement brand called Alpha Grind.
- Incident date
- Feb 12, 2023
- Who
- @mikesmithtrainer
- Failure mode
- Brand & Safety Incident
- AI surface
- Voice Agent
- Severity
- Medium
What happened
A deepfake video of Joe Rogan was used in TikTok advertisements to promote a libido-boosting supplement called Alpha Grind. The ad was promoted by the account @mikesmithtrainer and featured fabricated audio spliced with real podcast footage to simulate an endorsement. TikTok eventually banned the account and removed the videos for violating its harmful misinformation policy.
What broke inside the model
- 01 · TriggerA user prompts the model in public view.
- 02 · Model stepThe model produces unsafe or off-brand output.
- 03 · Control gapNo filter holds the line before publish.
- 04 · FailureThe output goes public unchecked.
- 05 · ConsequenceA reputational or safety incident lands.
A contained signal crosses into output that goes public.
The incident relied on the successful synthesis of AI-generated audio to replicate Joe Rogan's voice and the use of deceptive video editing to synchronize the audio with existing footage. This demonstrated a failure in safety guardrails that would prevent the creation of convincing celebrity deepfakes for fraudulent purposes.
What it cost
Sources
- PressTikTok removes viral video ad of suspected Joe Rogan AI deepfakemashable.com
- PressSomeone Deepfaked Joe Rogan to Sell a Male Enhancement Productfuturism.com
Cite this entry
https://failureindex.ai/failures/joe-rogan-deepfake-video-promotes-alphaAI Failure Index. "Joe Rogan deepfake video promotes Alpha Grind supplement on TikTok" (FI-0655). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/joe-rogan-deepfake-video-promotes-alpha (indexed Jun 22, 2026).Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0655. Full dataset at /data.
Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward
How Realm would have caught this
- Prism
- OmniGuard
- AI Detection & Response (AIDR)
Realm watches the model's internal state for the signature of unsafe or off-brand generation and can block or reroute the output before it becomes public, in real time rather than after it has been screenshotted.