The era of «deepfakes» is here. Are you ready?
- Patrick Trancu
- May 21, 2024
- 2 min read
The era of deepfakes is here. Better be prepared. I wrote this in a February 2019 blog post. Today we see the first corporate attacks.
At the time I wrote:
«If we look ahead and turn our attention away from celebrities and politicians and we think about corporations, we will quickly realize they represent a significant threat. With advances in AI, their production will become easier, faster, and accessible to a larger audience. And sooner rather than later, we will detect their first use.»
Take a minute and imagine a concerted effort to attack a company and its executives to destabilize it and destroy its reputation. Or perhaps simply used to manipulate stock prices. Or spread fake news more effectively. Think about the potential consequences of a deepfake in which a CEO admits to corporate wrongdoings, sexual abuse, consumer fraud…
The first step of crisis management is preparation. The sooner companies recognize the destructive potential of these new threats – and start planning for them – the better.”
A month ago someone contacted me for their thesis and asked me a few questions on the topic including if I thought companies were preparing for this kind of threat. I told him that as far as I could tell they were not.
Deepfakes have also not come up - as far as I can remember - in any of the 2024 risk/threat analysis reports now regularly published every year. These are mostly compiled through interviews with executives.
This weekend the Financial Times reported that UK engineering group Arup lost $25 million in a fraudsters’ deepfake video scam. Money was sent to Hong Kong accounts after a conference with the digitally cloned CFO. You can read the article in the first comment. Arup is not the only company: advertising agency WPP has also been the target of an unsuccessful deepfake scam.
Bottom line with the ultra rapid development of AI a new series of digital threats are quickly emerging. Companies need to be culturally aware, IT prepared, and implement stricter policies.