Bad actors around the world are investing in deepfake technology to make social engineering campaigns more effective. By using AI and machine learning, they’re creating manipulated or synthetic digital content, mostly video and audio, for use in cyber attacks and other fraudulent activity. With deepfake apps now even available on smartphones, the quality has improved so much in recent years, they can realistically replicate or alter appearance, mannerisms and voice, and they can defy all but the closest scrutiny to fool victims into believing that what they’re seeing or hearing is legitimate.

“Deepfakes have leapfrogged in the last few years and are sufficiently effective and commercially available to serve as a mainstream component in scams,” says Uri Rivner, CEO and co-founder of Refine Intelligence.