Why deepfake is the new fraud weapon of choice

Why it matters

Today’s anti-fraud and digital security professionals are faced with the new and complex challenge of fighting deepfake-powered crime. 

This challenge is compounded by the fact that generative AI (genAI) enables even freshman threat actors to leverage the power deepfakes for defrauding organizations, governments, and individuals with unbearable ease.

In this blog post you will gain insights into why this is the case and why anyone who is charged with fighting identity theft and fraud needs to be aware of the danger of voice deepfake-powered fraud.

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Key takeaways

• Deepfakes are lifelike representations of individuals, created by training generative AI algorithms on extensive datasets.
  
  
• The increased accessibility of generative AI has made creating deepfakes for committing fraud very easy.
  
  
• Accessibility, community, and data are accelerating the use of deepfakes for committing identity fraud.
  
  
• The application of voice deepfakes for fraud is on the rise with nearly 40% of organizations already having been hit.
  
  

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The dark side of generative AI

With the growing popularity of platforms such as ChatGPT, Bard, Scribe, Jasper, and more, generative AI has become more and more entrenched in our personal and professional lives since it was first introduced in late 2023. 

While this transformative technology is revolutionizing so much what we do on a daily basis, from planning our vacations to how we write and how developers code, it’s also reshaping cyber fraud and identity theft. 

With its ability to process vast amounts of data very quickly and automate tasks that only experts could perform in the past, any aspiring novice can now execute very sophisticated attacks.

And when it comes to deepfake-powered attacks, with genAI it couldn’t be easier. No knowledge of advanced software is required and there is no need to go wading through the dark web.

But before we get into that, let’s take a look at what deepfakes actually are.

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A brief intro to deepfakes

A deepfake is a highly realistic synthetic media file, such as an image, video, or audio file, which is created with artificial intelligence algorithms. 

These algorithms learn to replicate human facial expressions, body language, and vocal patterns, for producing media that can mimic real people or depict entirely fictional characters in very convincing ways. 

While deepfakes are often used for entertainment purpose, they have also become tools that are very attractive for cybercriminals in their aim to commit identity fraud to steal money, spread misinformation, or manipulate political events.

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The deep appeal of deepfake 

There are several phenomena in place that make deepfake increasingly popular among fraudsters:

• GenAI tools are accessible to anyone, they are cheap if not altogether free, and require zero technical skills.
  
  
• The budding fraudster has many sources at their disposal for learning the tricks of the trade, including many different forums, communities, and apps that are dedicated to sharing deepfake how-to knowledge.
  
  
• The world wide web and social media platforms are overflowing with data – billions of images, videos, and voice recordings of people, which can be easily mined and leveraged for creating exceedingly credible deepfakes of real people.

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It’s time for the voice to be heard

While deepfake-powered fraud is growing at the alarming rate of 3,000% (in 2023 over 2022), the one area that requires particular attention is voice deepfake-powered fraud, with 37% of organizations worldwide having already been hit.

Voice deepfake is especially attractive to fraudsters because as accessible and easy as it may be to create video deepfake – the voice is that much easier to create and so much harder to detect.

To learn more about why and how you can stop voice deepfake fraudsters in their tracks, we invite you to download our new whitepaper – How to prevent identity fraud with complete voice deepfake protection, by clicking here.