The European Police Service (Europol) warned against the widespread use of ‘deep fake’ technology in the criminal world (replacing a person in an existing image or video with another person’s image using artificial neural networks), saying that tackling it should be made a priority.
Deepfake technology means audio and visual content that ‘convincingly shows that AI makes people say or don’t do things they never say, or create personalities that never exist’.
The report, published today by europol’s Innovation Laboratory, cited examples of how misinformation can spread and have potentially devastating consequences with deep fake technology.
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First, it was stated that deep fake could be used to create a false emergency alert warning of an imminent attack.
The 23-page report noted that disinformation and the spread of deep fake will have a profound impact on people’s view of power and the media.
According to the report, 96 percent of deep fake videos contain pornography. This dangerous technology can also be used to blackmail people, especially minors, and add them to content containing pornography.
“This technology can also be used to target businesses to create a video or audio fraud that makes it appear that a company’s manager has committed a controversial or illegal act,” the report said.
An example was when criminals asked a company’s CEO to transfer $35 million to an employee with the sound created by deep fake.
“These technologies can combine or change the faces of the person to whom the passport belongs and the person who wants to obtain a passport illegally, which increases the chances of criminals passing identity checks,” the report said.
Similar to other tools used in cybercrime, deep fake technology has become more accessible, it was noted, underlining the need for policymakers to develop new legislation and law enforcement to develop new skills and technologies to effectively deal with such threats.
