Will deepfake cybercrime ever go mainstream?

Impersonating someone is hardly a revolutionary type of fraud, but this summer Patrick Hillmann, chief communications officer at cryptocurrency exchange Binance, found himself victim of a new approach to spoofing – using an artificial intelligence (AI) generated video also known as a deepfake. In August, Hillmann, who has been with the company for two years, received several online messages from people claiming that he had met with them regarding "potential opportunities to list their assets in Binance" – something he found odd because he didn't have oversight of Binance's listings. Moreover, the executive said, he had never met with any of the people who were messaging him. In a company blog post, Hillmann claimed that cybercriminals had set up Zoom calls with people via a fake LinkedIn profile, and used his previous news interviews and TV appearances to create a deepfake of him to participate in the calls. He described it as "refined enough to fool several highly intelligent crypto community members."