Leading endocrinologist Professor Jonathan Shaw was on holiday on K’gari (Fraser Island) off the coast of Queensland, with the patchy reception that entails, when he realised something weird was happening.

A deepfake version of him being interviewed by Karl Stefanovic had appeared on Facebook, where he was spruiking a supplement called Glyco Balance while calling doctors who prescribed metformin ‘idiots’.

Here the real Professor Shaw tells AusDoc about how the deepfake was created, what he thought when he first saw it and how the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute where he works as deputy director, got Facebook to take it down.

As one of the first high-profile Australian doctors to be targeted by deepfakes, he also talks about his fears of the future harm that can be done to medicine by AI-generated misinformation.