Superintendent Zhang Xunqing of the military’s Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau said police had yet to confirm any scams using deepfakes. Deepfakes involve high-quality videos that can make people appear in fake videos talking and moving around in real time.
But he said the technology is already being used to cause chaos, as scammers can involve real people in fake video calls and recordings.
The Japanese man told his country’s police that he had been tricked after finding an Instagram profile that appeared to be that of the chief executive of a retail bank in Hong Kong. Its profile included a video of the chief executive promoting investment plans in an interview with an international broadcaster.
Senior Inspector Tyler Chan demonstrates techniques for checking deepfake technology on a video call.Photo: Xiaomei Chen
The man followed the account, started chatting with a crook who he thought was the CEO of the bank, and ended up purchasing HK$1,700 worth of in-game credits at the crook’s request.
It wasn’t until after he bought the credits that he called the bank’s headquarters in Hong Kong to verify the authenticity of the CEO’s Instagram account and realized he had been scammed.
The bank has also contacted the Hong Kong police regarding the incident.
Chan said the scammers were able to collect facial and voice data for the fake videos from genuine content available on social media.
He said AI software tools have also allowed tricksters to “swap faces” in real-time video calls, pretending to be a convincing different person and confounding victims, but that is still the case in the city. It said the incident had not been reported.
A 25-year-old man who reported an attempted fraud in March said the incident happened after he made a video call with a fraudster on a sex live-streaming app of unknown origin.
He was threatened with a video of him having sex, which he soon learned was fake.
He ignored the scammer’s request to purchase HK$10,000 worth of game credits and deleted the app and all conversation records before calling the police.
Police did not investigate because the man was not injured, but police believe the scammers stole the man’s images and audio during video calls and used them in fake sex clips.
Senior Inspector Tyler Chan Chi-Wing of the Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau said there were telltale signs of deepfakes used in video calls, with unnatural eye and mouth movements to watch out for. .
To test authenticity, callers should be asked to run a finger over their face, he said.
The program has to adapt to sudden movements, so the mimicked face becomes blurry when the fingers move. In real video, the same movement occurs, so there is no blur.
Francis von Po Kieu, honorary chairman of the Hong Kong Information Technology Federation, expects the use of AI by fraudsters to become a trend as the tools to create convincing deepfakes are so easily and cheaply available. said.
A single picture and just a few sentences of voice recording were enough to create a counterfeit, and video calls were the perfect place for scammers to get the data they needed for their evil creations.
“It can take anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute for a fraudster to record your face and voice and impersonate you,” he says.
He listed more than 20 face-swap and voice-clone AI tools available from the site for a subscription fee of less than $100 per month.
He advised people to ignore all video call requests from unknown sources.
Police also called on tech-savvy teens to remind older family members of the dangers of such technology.
