Overheard my neighbor dismiss deepfakes as 'just stupid videos' and it got me thinking

4 comments

4 Comments

Saw a news piece where some hacker cloned a politician's voice from public speeches and left fake voicemails for family members asking for money. That's beyond just messing around, that's using tech to exploit trust in a real nasty way. People sleep on how dangerous this stuff gets when it's aimed at regular folks who don't see it coming.

pat_stone8d ago

Oh man, I gotta respectfully disagree with your neighbor there. Deepfakes are way more than just stupid videos these days. I've seen ones that swap faces on politicians saying stuff they never actually said, and it looks totally real in the moment. There was that audio deepfake of a CEO's voice that tricked a company into wiring $240,000 to scammers. That's not just a silly video, that's real damage. It's scary how good some of them are getting, and it's only gonna get worse.

nathan1008d ago

Yeah and the scary part is that stuff is getting way too easy to make. I saw a video where some guy showed how you can make a convincing deepfake with just a few photos and like 10 minutes of audio now. That CEO scam you mentioned, that wasn't even a super advanced setup, just some basic voice cloning software. Regular people have no idea how close we are to not being able to trust any video or audio call anymore.

brianm668d ago

Oh yeah, you're spot on. I actually know someone who got hit with a deepfake phone call last year. It was their boss's voice asking for a password reset on a company account. Sounded exactly like him, same little pauses and everything. They almost fell for it too. It's wild how fast this tech is moving, and regular folks have no idea how easy it is to get duped.