Deepfake videos looked so real that an employee agreed to send them $25 million
In a jarring demonstration of how AI-generated biometric deepfakes have hypercharged fraud tactics, a virtual meeting with video deepfakes of senior management tricked an employee at an unidentified multinational firm into transferring US$25 million into five Hong Kong bank accounts.
The South China Morning Post reports that the finance employee at the firm’s Hong Kong office suspected a meeting request from his company’s chief financial officer was a phishing email because it mentioned “secret transactions”. But on the subsequent video call, officials including the firm’s chief financial officer looked and sounded enough like real people to dispel his initial suspicions. The employee subsequently fulfilled the deepfake avatars’ request to make 15 transfers totalling HK$200 million.
The deepfakes were created using publicly available footage, and were discovered once the employee checked in with the company’s head office – by which time, the money was already gone.
Police have not identified the name of the firm or the employee.
Deepfakes have quickly become a public nuisance and fraud risk of mainstream proportions. Pornographic deepfakes of popular recording artist Taylor Swift recently made headlines and highlighted the disturbing ways in which deepfake technology can impinge on privacy rights.
Comments
Post a Comment