Lawyers from TVNZ have been playing a game of whack-a-mole trying to get a fake video of a Simon Dallow shilling out for a gambling app taken down.

The Artificial intelligence (AI) generated video shows a fake 1News story with doctored footage of the anchor talking about an app where people can win money.

In the footage his mouth is slightly augmented and out of sync with the words, but only slightly, and he is talking about how easy the game is to play.

The video continues with other testimonials – including from YouTube star MrBeast – who talks about how easy it is to win money on the app as Dallow’s voice is heard in talking about how much money Kiwis have won.

TVNZ moved quickly to have the ad taken down from Instagram where it first appeared, a spokesperson said.

While Dallow was unavailable to comment on the video, the spokesperson said finding and removing similarly augmented “scam advertisements” was “a bit like playing whack-a-mole”.

“We are seeing a proliferation of this type of scam material online and we are dealing with this content on a weekly basis,” she said.

“These fake stories and scam advertisements are a fabrication.”

“Our presenters images are used without permission, the quotes are made up and there is no legitimate endorsement or genuine association.”

She said lawyers immediately launch takedown proceedings when they find a new video but the increase in the sophistication of the AI-driven videos made it difficult to stamp out.

“As soon as one has been taken down, another comes up in its place,” she said.

She said while they tell platforms of infringing material “it may be that it has existed for some time online before we have spotted it or a viewer has informed us of its existence”.

She also said they tried to combat people being taken in by the scams by talking about how to stay safe online during news and current affairs shows.