Faces Are the Next Target for Fraudsters

In the past year, thousands of people in the U.S. have tried to trick facial identification verification to fraudulently claim unemployment benefits from state workforce agencies, according to identity verification firm ID.me Inc. The company, which uses facial-recognition software to help verify individuals on behalf of 26 U.S. states, says that between June 2020 and January 2021 it found more than 80,000 attempts to fool the selfie step in government ID matchups among the agencies it worked with. That included people wearing special masks, using deepfakes--lifelike images generated by AI--or holding up images or videos of other people, says ID.me Chief Executive Blake Hall. A look at how innovation and technology are transforming the way we live, work and play. Facial recognition for one-to-one identification has become one of the most widely used applications of artificial intelligence, allowing people to make payments via their phones, walk through passport checking systems or verify themselves as workers.