Deepfake, what is it?

These are videos or images that involve the use of AI programs and can be used to falsify a person's image, making it seem as if they are saying or doing something they never did, and it is even possible to clone a person's voice.

Technology is already being used by scammers for job interviews, a case that has been the subject of FBI investigations following reports of suspicious behavior on the part of interviewees. According to the investigations, the intention behind these attempts may be related to the theft of personal data.

A public announcement of FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released last Tuesday warning of an increase in complaints reporting the use of Deepfake technology in job interviews. The search for remote jobs has become news worldwide.

This technology, which was already being used for entertainment purposes on YouTube, is now also being used by criminals in identity theft schemes.

 "Complaints report the use of voice spoofing, or potentially voice deepfakes, during online interviews with potential candidates.", said the FBI.

Technology has been used by scammers in job interviews for technology positions at companies.

According to reports received by the FBI, the positions where there were the most reports of attempted scams were... Deepfakes have been linked to information technology.Computer programming, databases, and software-related functions all share the common feature of being able to access customer information, financial data, corporate IT databases, and proprietary information.

Reports emerged as recruiters noticed inconsistencies that revealed flaws in the technology used. For example, when the lip movements of the person appearing on screen were out of sync with the audio. from the person speaking, or actions such as coughing, sneezing, or other auditory actions inconsistent with what is being seen.

With the increased ease of creating deepfakes, online resources have emerged to help people detect these attempted scams, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which launched a website called... Detect Fakeswhich helps people identify the practice.

In the project description, MIT presents eight questions that help people determine if a video is fake, such as "Does the skin look too smooth or too wrinkled?" and "Do shadows appear in places you would expect?".

The chances of identifying a scam in an interview are high, because although creating a deepfake is relatively easy, creating one perfectly is very difficult.

Misuse of deepfakes is nothing new.

The use of this technology exploded as it became easier to create them, and since Motherboard discovered the first deepfake made by casual consumers in 2019, other related cases have emerged, including... The use of deepfakes to create non-consensual pornography.

"The main trend we identified is the prominence of non-consensual deepfake pornography, which accounted for 96% of all deepfake videos online.""This is a line from the 2019 report, The State of Deepfakes."

Technology has also been used in actions involving fraud in political results and scams, such as the case of the senior financial controllers at Symantec who sent millions of pounds to criminals who used deepfake audio to carry out the scam, and also the case of a political party in Belgium, the SP.a (“Socialistische Partij, anders”), which created a deepfake video of Donald Trump encouraging the population to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement, a video that went viral and generated outrage from the population opposed to the famous American politician who did not realize that it was not official material.