An employee of an international organisation based in Hong Kong was fooled by deepfakes appearing to be genuine clients during a conference call.
The exchange resulted in more than $25 million of company funds being lost. The problem of deepfakes struck right at the heart of this organisation as private companies in general grapple with evolving fraud techniques.
The culprit, who is yet to be identified, engaged several times with the company in order to create deep learning, AI-generated deepfakes of the participants. This client deepfake scam modified an audio and visual representation of the company’s Chief Financial Officer and other colleagues. The incident has proposed the idea that all professionals within organisations should be made aware of the signs of spotting a deepfake, and not just top executives that participate in industry events, like Identity Week.
Deepfakes have disseminated into workplace platforms and software to generate global companies like Microsoft further profitability. However, Microsoft provoked criticism after offering an AI ‘deepfake generator’ tool which could be used to allow photorealistic copying of faces. This client deepfake scam modified an audio and visual representation of the participants.
