Faking it on the phone: How to tell if a voice call is AI or not

There was a time when we could believe everything we saw and heard. Unfortunately, those days are probably long gone. Generative AI (GenAI) has democratized the creation of deepfake audio and video, to the point where generating a fabricated clip is as easy as pushing a button or two. This is bad news for everyone, including businesses.

Deepfakes are helping scammers bypass Know Your Customer and account authentication checks. They can even enable malicious state actors to masquerade as job candidates. But arguably the biggest threat they pose is financial/wire transfer fraud and the hijacking of executive accounts.

Organizations underestimate the deepfake threat at their peril. The British government claims that as many as eight million synthetic clips were shared last year, up from just 500,000 in 2023. The real figure may be far higher.

How attacks work

As an experiment by ESET Global Security Advisor Jake Moore ...