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An impersonator is someone who imitates or copies the behavior or actions of another. [1] There are many reasons for impersonating someone:
Celebrity impersonators are impostors who look similar to celebrities and dress in such a way as to imitate them. Impersonators are known as sound-alikes, look-alikes, impressionists, imitators, tribute artists, and wannabees. The interest may have originated with the need or desire to see a celebrity who has died.[ citation needed ] One of the most prominent examples of this phenomenon is the case of Elvis Presley. Edward Moss has appeared in movies and sitcoms, impersonating Michael Jackson. [3] [4] Tom Jones has attracted his share of impersonators from different places around the world. From the United States, to South East Asia, to the UK, there are performers who either sound like him or imitate his act. [5] [6] [7] [8]
In England and Wales, the Poor Law Amendment Act 1851, section 3, made it an offence to impersonate a "person entitled to vote" at an election. In the case of Whiteley v Chappell (1868), the literal rule of statutory interpretation was employed to find that a dead person was not a "person entitled to vote" and consequently a person accused of this offence was acquitted. [9]
Although in a Colorado case, an immigrant was charged with "criminal impersonation" for using another person's Social Security number when signing up for a job,[ citation needed ] some courts have ruled that supplying this wrong information may not be criminal. [10] The ruling hinges on whether there was harm to the other person.[ citation needed ]
Audio deepfakes have been used as part of social engineering scams, fooling people into thinking they are receiving instructions from a trusted individual. [11] In 2019, a U.K.-based energy firm's CEO was scammed over the phone when he was ordered to transfer €220,000 into a Hungarian bank account by an individual who used audio deepfake technology to impersonate the voice of the firm's parent company's chief executive. [12]
As of 2023, the combination advances in deepfake technology, which could clone an individual's voice from a recording of a few seconds to a minute, and new text generation tools, enabled automated impersonation scams, targeting victims using a convincing digital clone of a friend or relative. [13]
Identity theft, identity piracy or identity infringement occurs when someone uses another's personal identifying information, like their name, identifying number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. The term identity theft was coined in 1964. Since that time, the definition of identity theft has been legally defined throughout both the U.K. and the U.S. as the theft of personally identifiable information. Identity theft deliberately uses someone else's identity as a method to gain financial advantages or obtain credit and other benefits. The person whose identity has been stolen may suffer adverse consequences, especially if they are falsely held responsible for the perpetrator's actions. Personally identifiable information generally includes a person's name, date of birth, social security number, driver's license number, bank account or credit card numbers, PINs, electronic signatures, fingerprints, passwords, or any other information that can be used to access a person's financial resources.
A look-alike, or double, is a person who bears a strong physical resemblance to another person, excluding cases like twins and other instances of family resemblance.
An Elvis impersonator is an entertainer who impersonates or copies the look and sound of American musician and rock singer Elvis Presley. Professional Elvis impersonators, commonly known as Elvis tribute artists (ETAs), work all over the world as entertainers, and such tribute acts remain in great demand due to the iconic status of Elvis Presley. In addition, there were several radio stations that exclusively feature Elvis impersonator material. Some of these impersonators go to Graceland Memphis, Tennessee on the anniversary of Presley's death to pay tribute to the beloved artist.
Scam baiting is a form of internet vigilantism primarily used towards advance-fee fraud, IRS impersonation scams, technical support scams, pension scams, and consumer financial fraud.
An impressionist or a mimic is a performer whose act consists of imitating sounds, voices and mannerisms of celebrities and cartoon characters. The word usually refers to a professional comedian/entertainer who specializes in such performances and has developed a wide repertoire of impressions, including adding to them, often to keep pace with current events. Impressionist performances are a classic casino entertainment genre.
Elvis Presley has inspired artistic and cultural works since he entered the national consciousness. From that point, interest in his personal and public life has never stopped. Some scholars have studied many aspects of his profound cultural influence. Billboard historian Joel Whitburn declared Presley the "#1 act of the Rock era".
Paul Edward Boland Jr. is an American impressionist, singer, and announcer.
Human image synthesis is technology that can be applied to make believable and even photorealistic renditions of human-likenesses, moving or still. It has effectively existed since the early 2000s. Many films using computer generated imagery have featured synthetic images of human-like characters digitally composited onto the real or other simulated film material. Towards the end of the 2010s deep learning artificial intelligence has been applied to synthesize images and video that look like humans, without need for human assistance, once the training phase has been completed, whereas the old school 7D-route required massive amounts of human work .
A soundboard is a computer program, Web application, or device, formerly created in Adobe Flash, that catalogues and plays many audio clips. Soundboards are self-contained, requiring no outside media player. In recent years soundboards have been made available in the form of mobile apps available on iPhone App Store and Google Play. Since Adobe and web browser developers deprecated support for Flash, HTML5-based soundboards have gained popularity in recent years.
A romance scam is a confidence trick involving feigning romantic intentions towards a victim, gaining the victim's affection, and then using that goodwill to get the victim to send money to the scammer under false pretenses or to commit fraud against the victim. Fraudulent acts may involve access to the victim's money, bank accounts, credit cards, passports, Cash App, e-mail accounts, or national identification numbers; or forcing the victims to commit financial fraud on their behalf.
Voice phishing, or vishing, is the use of telephony to conduct phishing attacks.
Sightings of the American singer Elvis Presley have been reported following his death in 1977. The conspiracy theory that Elvis did not die and instead went into hiding was popularized by Gail Brewer-Giorgio and other authors.
Social hacking describes the act of attempting to manipulate outcomes of social behaviour through orchestrated actions. The general function of social hacking is to gain access to restricted information or to a physical space without proper permission. Most often, social hacking attacks are achieved by impersonating an individual or group who is directly or indirectly known to the victims or by representing an individual or group in a position of authority. This is done through pre-meditated research and planning to gain victims’ confidence. Social hackers take great measures to present overtones of familiarity and trustworthiness to elicit confidential or personal information. Social hacking is most commonly associated as a component of “social engineering”.
Deepfakes are images, videos, or audio which are edited or generated using artificial intelligence tools, and which may depict real or non-existent people. They are a type of synthetic media and modern form of a Media prank.
A SIM swap scam is a type of account takeover fraud that generally targets a weakness in two-factor authentication and two-step verification in which the second factor or step is a text message (SMS) or call placed to a mobile telephone.
Digital cloning is an emerging technology, that involves deep-learning algorithms, which allows one to manipulate currently existing audio, photos, and videos that are hyper-realistic. One of the impacts of such technology is that hyper-realistic videos and photos makes it difficult for the human eye to distinguish what is real and what is fake. Furthermore, with various companies making such technologies available to the public, they can bring various benefits as well as potential legal and ethical concerns.
The "Con Queen" scam is a long-running and elaborate scam perpetrated by the so-called Hollywood Con Queen, an Indonesian impostor named Hargobind Punjabi Tahilramani who was eventually found and arrested. The con, which was successfully operated for several years, targets entertainment industry gig workers, who travel to Indonesia believing that they have been recruited to work on the production of a film or television show.
A Madonna impersonator is an entertainer who impersonates American singer-songwriter Madonna. Professional or dedicated Madonna impersonators have existed since at least the mid-1980s, and were sometimes sorted as "tribute acts". As an established artist, Madonna impersonators have seen a notable demand, many of them performing in front of thousands people and visiting several countries in their professional Madonna career as some media outlets have reported. Notable Madonna impersonators include Chris America, Denise Bella Vlasis and Venus D-Lite. Others impressionists have included Madonna in their repertoire, such as Tracey Bell, Charlie Hides and Véronic DiCaire, while Nadya Ginsburg and Alejandra Bogue dedicated Madonna-inspired monologues.
The ELVIS Act or Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, signed into law by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee on March 21, 2024, marked a significant milestone in the area of regulation of artificial intelligence and public sector policies for artists in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI alignment. It was noted as the first enacted legislation in the United States of America specifically designed to protect musicians from the unauthorized use of their voices through artificial intelligence technologies and against audio deepfakes and voice cloning. This legislation distinguishes itself by adding penalties for copying a performer's voice without permission, a measure that addresses the sophisticated ability of AI to mimic public figures, including artists.
He is a Ralph Waldo Emerson reenactor. This man gets paid to dress like, act like, and speak like Ralph Waldo Emerson. He's 63 years old and wears a black frock coat...'I use the term 'historic interpreter' or 'living historian.' But when people say 'impersonator,' that doesn't bother me.'