- Deepfake scams, powered by generative AI, have increased substantially over the past several years
- Small businesses are major targets for these scammers because they lack the cybersecurity infrastructure of larger companies
- Experts warn that as AI detection tools get stronger, AI models will also get stronger, creating a vicious cycle that will be hard to escape
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Over the past few years, the potential uses of generative AI, both positive and negative, have been talked to death. However, there's one application of the technology that small business owners are saying is often overlooked: the deepfake economy.
Several small business owners told Business Insider that since ChatCPT's debut three years ago, the deepfake economy has blown up. Now, scammers are using these deepfakes to pose as employees of a company, running cons that are wreaking havoc on the brands' reputations and bottom lines.
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An unnamed finance clerk at engineering firm Arup told the outlet about a time he joined a video call with his AI versions of colleagues. One of these "colleagues," supposedly the company's chief financial officer, asked him to approve a series of overseas transfers worth more than $25 million. Believing that the request came from his boss, the finance clerk approved the transactions. Only after the money had been sent did he learn that the colleagues were actually deepfake recreations of his real coworkers.
The finance clerk isn't the only one being deceived by these impressionists. According to data from Chinabuse, TRM Labs' open-source fraud reporting platform, generative AI-enabled scams rose by 456% between May 2024 and April, when compared with the same period the year before.
Another survey from Nationwide Insurance released in September found that 12% of small business owners had faced at least one deepfake scam within the previous year. Small businesses, the survey said, are more likely to fall victim to these types of scams because they lack the cybersecurity infrastructure of larger companies.
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Rob Duncan, vice president of strategy at Netcraft, told Business Insider that he isn't surprised at the increase in highly personalized attacks against small businesses. Generative AI has made it much easier for inexperienced scammers to pose as brands and launch these scams. As AI continues to improve, "attackers can more easily spoof employees, fool customers, or impersonate partners across multiple channels," he said.
Many of the platforms used by small businesses, like Teams and Zoom, are getting better at detecting AI and weeding out accounts that don't have real people behind them. However, many experts worry that improved detection tools are making the AI problem worse.
Beyond Identity CEO Jasson Casey told Business Insider that the data collected by platforms like Zoom and Teams is not only used to suss out deepfakes but to train sophisticated AI models. This creates a vicious cycle that becomes "an arms race defenders cannot win.”
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Casey and Robin Pugh, the executive director of non-profit Intelligence for Good, say that small businesses can best protect themselves from deepfake scams by focusing on confirming identities rather than disproving AI use. They also warn that these generative AI-based scams will not be going away anytime soon.
Nina Etemadi, cofounder of a Philadelphia-based small business named Cake Life Bake Shop, agrees, telling Business Insider, “Doing business online gets more necessary and high risk every year. AI is just part of that."
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