AI-generated audio and video are being used to trick businesses and individuals
The person at the other end of that video call certainly looks and sounds legitimate. Maybe it’s someone you’ve bonded with on a dating site, or maybe it’s a semi-distant relative or remote work colleague. Yes, it’s odd that they’re asking you to send them money or provide sensitive personal information, but you trust them.
Just one problem: They’re not real. Their image and voice have been generated through artificial intelligence (AI), and are being controlled behind the scenes by a scammer. What you’re experiencing is a deepfake, a rapidly evolving technology often used for malicious acts.
The U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) defines a deepfake as video, photography, or audio that "seems real but has been manipulated with AI. The underlying technology can replace faces, manipulate facial expressions, synthesize faces, and synthesize speech."
More and more criminals are using AI deepfakes to commit identity fraud or pry money and data from businesses and individuals. The digital verification platform Sumsub reported an astonishing 1740% jump in deepfake-related fraud attempts in North America between 2022 and 2023.
How deepfakes are being used in scams
By creating a deepfake persona, fraudsters can trick people into believing they’re interacting with someone they know or want to know. This builds trust, making it easier for the scammer to manipulate the victim. Cybercriminals can also utilize deepfakes to create compromising material for the purpose of extortion. They can use an AI bot to, for example, take a brief snippet of a person’s real voice and “clone” it to produce an authentic-sounding facsimile; the faked voice can then be made to say just about anything.
The majority of deepfake fraud cases thus far have targeted businesses. Even large global companies can fall for these scams: In one recent example, an employee at a multinational design and engineering firm was tricked by a deepfake video call into transferring $25 million of the company’s funds to fraudsters. Many bad actors, meanwhile, are using deepfake audio and video in attempts to gain access to company data, which could result in breaches of customer information.
As this technology grows more sophisticated, it’s also getting easier to use—which means it’s becoming increasingly popular as a method to defraud individuals. Deepfakes have already made their way into the world of romance scams, according to a recent report in Wired. The article described how a crew of scammers used "deepfakes and face-swapping to ensnare victims in romance scams, building trust with victims using fake identities, before tricking them into parting with thousands of dollars."
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