Deepfakes and Your Finances: What You Need to Know

While artificial intelligence (AI) has legitimate uses for entertainment and fun pastimes, use of deepfakes for malicious purposes is on the rise — and it’s hard to detect, even for the tech-savvy.

The scam: Criminals use AI to generate videos, photos, or voice messages impersonating someone familiar to you. They may show this familiar person’s “deepfake” doing or saying something that they did not do or say — in a shockingly realistic manner — as part of a deceptive scheme to manipulate you, defraud you, or spread misinformation.

Deepfake scams take many forms

Current AI technology can replace faces, manipulate facial expressions, synthesize faces and speech, and even engage in realistic conversation through chatbots.

Scammers continuously evolve their focus and approach, but financial and investment scams are among the most common criminal schemes. Deepfakes can be created to impersonate financial experts or famous investors promoting phony investment opportunities. Other common schemes include political scams, romance scams, and celebrity endorsement scams — also with the ultimate purpose of taking your money.

What’s real and what’s not?

Detecting a deepfake video or image can be very difficult, but here are some things to watch or listen for:

• In videos: unnatural posture, facial movements, or blinking eyes; blurred mouth area; odd shadows; jagged or pixilated images; strange color or light changes.

• In photos: an artificial, too-perfect look; unnatural features, such as extra fingers, distorted legs, or strange facial structure; inconsistent skin color on different parts of the body.

• In audio: a flat tone of voice that sounds too perfect, without normal conversational changes; a lack of background noise.

Protect yourself

As always, healthy skepticism is your best defense. Trust your gut. In addition:

• Don’t share personal information on social media.

• If someone calls you unexpectedly and asks for personal information or money, assume it’s a scam and then verify. If it’s an institution, call back with a phone number from the official website. If it’s a person you know, ask them to share something only the real person could answer or hang up and call them back using the number you have in your contacts.

• Pause and give yourself time to think. Take the urgency out of the situation and take the time to consider whether what you’re hearing or seeing is likely to be true.  

Finally, if you think you’ve been targeted, report the incident to your local law enforcement agency, the Federal Trade Commission, or the Consumer Protection Office in your state.