CNN reported a finance worker at a multinational company was fooled into paying out $25 million to scammers who used deepfake technology to impersonate the company’s chief financial officer in a video conference call, according to Hong Kong police. During the call, the worker thought he was interacting with several other staff members, but they were all deepfake replicas, the police said at a briefing. The worker became suspicious after getting a message from the company’s UK-based chief financial officer. At the video call, everyone else appeared and sounded just like the worker’s colleagues, leading him to transfer $25.6 million, thinking it was a legitimate transaction.
The case is one of many instances in which fraudsters are believed to have used deepfake technology to alter publicly available video and other footage to deceive individuals into giving them money. Hong Kong police have made six arrests in connection with these scams and discovered that stolen Hong Kong identity cards were used for fraudulent activities. In at least 20 instances, AI deepfakes were used to deceive facial recognition programs by mimicking the individuals pictured on the identity cards. The fraudulent CFO incident came to light after the employee checked with the company’s head office.
The name of the company and the worker were not disclosed by the Hong Kong police. Officials worldwide are increasingly worried about the capabilities of deepfake technology and its potential for malicious use. In January, AI-generated pornographic images of the American pop star Taylor Swift circulated widely on social media, highlighting the harmful possibilities of artificial intelligence technology. These images were removed from social platforms after being viewed by millions of people.
