Recently, cybercriminals used ‘deepfake’ videos of the executives of a multinational company to convince the company’s Hong Kong-based employees to wire out US $25.6 million. Based on a video conference call featuring multiple deepfakes, the employees believed that their UK-based chief financial officer had requested that the funds be transferred. Police have reportedly arrested six people in connection with the scam. This use of AI technology is dangerous and manipulative. Without proper guidelines and frameworks in place, more organizations risk falling victim to AI scams like deepfakes. 

Deepfakes 101 and their rising threat 

Deepfakes are forms of digitally altered media — including photos, videos and audio clips — that seem to depict a real person. They are created by training an AI system on real clips featuring a person, and then using that AI system to generate realistic (yet inauthentic) new media. Deepfake use is becoming more common. The Hong Kong case was the latest in a series of high-profile deepfake incidents in recent weeks. Fake, explicit images of Taylor Swift circulated on social media, the political party of an imprisoned election candidate in Pakistan used a deepfake video of him to deliver a speech and a deepfake ‘voice clone’ of President Biden called primary voters to tell them not to vote. 

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