Why is Deepfake an Enormous Problem, and How Could it be Avoided?

Deepfakes, as the term hints, is another artificial intelligence (AI) level that opens the boundaries of highly realistic but fake content. Through deep learning algorithms, deepfakes can create almost indistinguishable sounds and visuals of people and real-life events, which, unfortunately, enables a wide range of criminal activities. In more technical terms, deepfakes stem from artificial neural networks, representing computer systems that learn by studying data patterns. To generate a fake image or video, artificial neural networks are fed vast amounts of pictures and videos to help them understand what they will mimic by identifying and reconstructing the content. 

Countering deepfakes today requires the most advanced digital identification solutions and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes. Ensuring the security of the ID authentication and KYC processes is more crucial than ever. Why?

The countless examples of deepfake-related crimes are alarming: Deepfake fraud attempts rose 3,000% in 2023, which generally emerge in two types: targeting individuals through fake voice videos or businesses through phishing attacks. The latter is as destructive as ransomware attacks on companies, leading to substantial financial losses and even bankruptcy. 

The most remarkable examples display the scale and magnitude that deepfake attacks can reach. Emerged as the weapon for blackmail, deepfakes are used to produce inappropriate videos, turning anyone into fake content in it. Taylor Swift, one of the most famous American singers with over 370 million dollar revenue in 2023, was targeted with indecent content created by deepfake, causing massive outrage among her followers on social media, primarily on Instagram, where she is followed by 250 million people. The outrage forced Twitter to temporarily remove Taylor Swift-related searches. On the business side, a finance worker at a multinational company in Hong Kong was tricked into transferring 25 million dollars to hackers who used deepfake to appear as the company’s chief financial officer (CFO) in a video conference call. 

These two events happened at the beginning of 2024, reminding us of the enormous risks deep fakes are carrying and triggering a massive effort from governments worldwide to increase the laws monitoring and forbidding the use of deep fakes. Nevertheless, AI is outpacing laws and regulations because there’s so much deepfakes can do other than create explicit imagery and videos to spread misinformation. Criminals can execute several types of attacks and commit fraud by opening bank accounts, manipulating people to commit crimes, and, most commonly, blackmailing individuals. 

Deepfakes are today used to harm individuals and companies mainly for financial gain in three ways: 

• Spreading false information on social media: From an elephant throwing garbage to a fake speech of Tom Hanks, deepfake can put anything in front of your eyes as if it is accurate.
• Tainting reputation: In several countries, many politicians were targeted with deepfakes to undermine their reputations by spreading false images and information, resulting in high confusion and noise, which requires much time and energy to deal with.
• Identity fraud: Deepfakes are destructively successful in creating fake people’s voices, images, and visuals, which are used in phishing scams worldwide. 

EnQualify’s technology pinpoints all the risks emerging in the digital fintech world, comprehensively blocking all attack forms of deepfake with various solutions. State-of-the-art solutions offered by EnQulify include KYC, face verification, liveness verification, video identification, remote ID identification (AI on Mobile Edge), and multi-factor ID authentication. How do they work?