Physicist Brian Cox has thanked YouTube for taking down accounts that used AI to create deepfakes of him saying “nonsense” about comet ATLAS 3i — but was left wondering what the long-term solution is.
Cox, Professor of Particle Physics at The University of Manchester and star of a number of high-profile science documentaries, took to X / Twitter earlier this week to complain about what he described as “AI shite of me popping up on YouTube.”
“The general rule is that if I appear to say something that you agree with and you are a UFO nobber, flat earth bell end or think comet ATLAS 3i is a spaceship, it’s fake,” he said in the tweet, now viewed 618,500 times.
A lot of this revolves around 3I/ATLAS, which was discovered on July 1, 2025. Since then, astronomers have been working towards understanding the comet because, unlike other comets, 3I/ATLAS doesn't orbit the Sun. It's an interstellar comet, and one of only three we've ever seen. That means it entered our Solar System from elsewhere in the Galaxy, and will eventually exit it, and when it does leave our Solar System it will be gone forever. 3I/ATLAS is thought to be at least 7 billion years old, making it likely twice as old as Earth, and the oldest comet we've ever seen.
Some people are saying 3I/ATLAS could be an alien mothership conducting a hidden maneuver around the sun, and now prominent scientists are discovering deepfakes showing them saying just that.
In response to calls for YouTube to take action, Cox tweeted: “We keep telling them and they are bloody slow.”
It now appears YouTube has taken action, although, according to Cox, limited to the more prominent accounts. In a tweet, he wondered how this will all play out.
“Thanks to @YouTube for taking down the more prominent AI accounts of me quickly - I’m not sure what the solution to this will be in the longer term. Doesn’t matter so much if it’s nonsense about a comet - but in other areas of science and certainly politics it’s clearly important. Interested to know what you think?”
