Top 10 Examples of Deepfake Across The Internet

Sarah, a risk officer at PrimeTrust Fintech, was in a meeting when she got an urgent call from the company’s chief compliance officer.

“Sarah, I need immediate approval for a KYC override. A VIP client is locked out, and their facial verification isn’t working. I’ve personally verified their credentials—just push it through.”

The request sounded routine, and nothing about the voice was unusual. Except it wasn’t the chief compliance officer on the call—it was a deepfake clone, mimicking his voice with unsettling accuracy. 

That’s deepfake fraud for you in a nutshell.

The seemingly harmless deepfakes are now used to bypass security systems, tricking even the most experienced professionals in banking and fintech. between deepfakes and real identities is a growing concern.

In this blog post, we bring you 10 amusing and horrifying real examples of deepfakes and discuss practical ways to protect your business from this rising threat.

Top 10 amusing and terrifying deepfake examples

We will now look at the most convincing deepfake examples crafted by AI technology and their deep learning models.

Financial fraud

1. $25.6 million deepfake financial fraud – AI-generated video call scam

Earlier in 2024, a finance worker at Arup, the 78-year-old London-based architecture and design firm, approved a $25.6 million transaction after attending a deepfake video call with Arup’s CFO and other staff members.

The employee had doubts when he received a mail from the CFO citing the need for a secret transaction. However, the video call with the team was so convincing that he had to keep his doubts aside and transfer the money. The employee discovered it to be a scam when he checked with the corporation’s head office.

🤯 Did You Know: On average, financial institutions lose over $600,000 towards deepfake fraud incidents, the industry most affected by deepfake images and videos.

2. A Voice Deepfake Was Used To Scam A CEO Out Of $243,000

Back in 2019, the CEO of an unnamed UK-based energy firm became a victim of deepfake technology. Supposedly he was on call with his firm’s chief executive in Germany (parent company). The executive ordered him to immediately transfer €220,000 (approx. $243,000) to the bank account of a Hungarian supplier.

The voice cloning was so perfect that it carried the melody and subtle German accent of his boss’s voice. It was only when the imposter called repeatedly that the CEO grew skeptical.

Pro Tip: Never approve financial requests based on voice alone. Always confirm urgent fund transfers through a secondary verification method.

3. Bank manager tricked into transferring $35 Million in a deepfake bank heist

In 2020, cybercriminals used AI-generated voice technology to impersonate a company’s CEO, instructing a bank manager to transfer $35 million to fraudulent accounts. The manager, convinced by the realistic voice, authorized the transaction.

These are among the many examples of deepfakes used in financial fraud, showing how AI-generated scams can bypass security and cost millions.

Political manipulation

4. Fake surrender video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

Back in 2022, a hacked Ukrainian TV station broadcasted a deepfake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky instructing Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their arms and surrender to Russian forces.

While the video was visibly fake with unnatural facial movements and lip-sync issues, the video still spread quickly on social media before fact-checkers could contain the damage.

5. Doctored deepfake video of Nancy Pelosi

In 2019, a manipulated video of Nancy Pelosi surfaced on Facebook, where her speech was intentionally slowed down to make her appear intoxicated. In the video, she was seen slurring the words.

When Facebook refused to remove the doctored video, a new deepfake video emerged on the Internet. That brings us to our next example.

But…

🤯 Did You Know: Experts warn that AI-generated political deepfakes could become a major tool for election interference that will make it hard for voters to distinguish fact from fiction.

6. Mark Zuckerberg deepfake AI fake speech on data control

When Facebook refused to take down Nancy Pelosi’s video, artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe created a deepfake of Mark Zuckerberg. In the video, Mark Zuckerberg is seen boasting about how the platform “owns” its users.

In addition to the instances above, here are a few more examples of deepfakes and fake videos used for political manipulation:

• There’s a deepfake where Russian President Vladimir Putin declared peace with Ukraine
• Scammers created a fake video of President Zelensky promoting cryptocurrency investments
• A deepfake altered Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech fueling political misinformation and fake news
• U.S. Senator Ben Cardin was tricked on a fake video call impersonating Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister trying to gather sensitive political information

Read more: How do Deepfakes Work? 

Media misinformation

7. Korean newsreader Kim Joo-Ha

In 2020, South Korean broadcaster MBN aired an AI-generated deepfake of news anchor Kim Joo-Ha, demonstrating the use of deepfake technology can be used in mainstream media. This was an authorized test and the viewers were informed in advance.

However, the company announced that it plans to continue using Deepfake for some breaking news reports.

Read more: Are deepfakes illegal? 

Employment fraud

8. North Korean hacker hired as IT worker—Deepfake job scam

Cybersecurity firm KnowBe4 unknowingly hired a North Korean hacker as a remote IT worker after scammers used a deepfake identity during an extensive hiring process. The fraudulent candidate passed a background check, conference-based evaluations, and four video interviews, successfully deceiving the company.

The employee was later found to be using a stolen identity belonging to a U.S.-based individual. This just highlights the growing risk of deepfake-powered employment fraud in remote hiring.

Celebrity impersonations

9. Tom Cruise’s hyper-realistic deepfake videos on Tik Tok

There’s a page on TikTok Deeptomcrusie with nearly 3.6 Million followers. This page is dedicated entirely to hyper-realistic deepfake videos of Tom Cruise. The page features videos of “Tom Cruise” performing magic tricks, playing golf, and engaging in everyday activities—all generated using AI.

Suggestion: We can pull a TikTok video from the deepfake account of Tomcruise and add it here. 

10. Taylor Swift deepfake in a le creuset kitchenware giveaway

It’s a deepfake video where Taylor is announcing a partnership with Le Creuset, claiming to offer free cookware sets due to a packaging error. When the viewers clicked on the website to claim their free sets, they were directed to a phishing website designed to steal their personal information and charge unauthorized fees.

That said, celebrity impersonations are common because there is ample data on their images, videos, and voice profiles available on the Internet. Machine learning models can easily train on this data to create realistic deepfakes.

Here are a couple more examples of deepfakes used in entertainment and media:

• There exists a hyper-realistic deepfake video of Morgan Freeman delivering a speech he never gave
• Luke Skywalker was digitally de-aged using deepfake technology in The Mandalorian Season 2 finale of the Star Wars story
• Lynda Carter into the reimagined world and costume of Gal Gadot’s big-screen Wonder Woman
• A deepfake where Jordan Peele’s mouth pasted over the former president’s jawline (President Barack Obama) synced perfectly with the speech

Deepfakes aren’t always created for satire—many have malicious intent ranging from financial fraud to political manipulation. With increasingly convincing deepfake examples emerging, and financial institutions being at the center of these targets, technology and processes to detect deepfake needs to evolve.

How Deepfakes Can Impact Your Business

Thanks to generative adversarial networks (GANs), deepfake technology can now create hyper-realistic digital faces, cloned voices, and manipulated videos that are nearly impossible to distinguish from real people.

While that’s amusing, such an advanced level of cloning presents a growing security risk for businesses, capable of fooling even the most (adjective) identity verification systems. 

Many organizations rely on biometric authentication, video KYC, and voice recognition for secure customer onboarding and fraud prevention—but deepfakes can now bypass these safeguards with alarming accuracy.

🤯 Did You Know: A Wall Street Journal reporter used an AI voice clone to bypass Chase customer service and their automated biometric voice print security system as an experiment. The cloned voice passed authentication and was granted access to a live bank agent—proving that advanced verifications are needed to protect businesses against deepfake frauds. 

Key risks of deepfakes for businesses

Identity verification fraud

Fraudsters use deepfakes to create synthetic identities, impersonate real customers, and hijack existing accounts. This compromises the onboarding and KYC process exposing the business to the risk of facilitating financial crimes like money laundering.

🤯Did you know: Fraudsters use synthetic identities created using the social security numbers of deceased individuals to open new bank accounts, secure loans, and conduct money laundering endeavors?

Fraudulent transactions

Fraudsters use deepfake voices, videos, and manipulated documents to impersonate executives or account holders. Businesses, especially banks, can approve fake wire transfers, fraudulent loan requests, and unauthorized payment changes, resulting in financial losses and compliance violations.

Data breaches

Fraudsters use deepfake images and voice clones to trick bank and FinTech employees into resetting credentials, approving unauthorized access, and exposing confidential data. If an employee fails to verify identity properly, it may result in security breaches, data leaks, and financial losses.

💡Pro Tip: Implement AI-powered deepfake detection and enforce strict multi-factor authentication (MFA) protocols to reduce the risk of social engineering attacks.

Reputational damage

A single deepfake-driven fraud incident can lead to public backlash, loss of business, and long-term reputational harm. It raises doubts about the company’s security measures and ability to protect customers, risking their credibility. 

Regulatory fines

Businesses, especially those regulated under KYC and AML requirements, face significant regulatory fines, legal action, and potential license suspension if they fail to prevent fraudulent accounts and detect illicit transactions.

Market manipulation

Fraudsters use deepfakes to spread false financial information and manipulate stock prices. Such instances are frequented in crypto markets where fake executive announcements and fabricated investor updates can drive price swings, panic selling, or artificial demand.

Interesting case point: After the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the deepfake video of its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) circulated on Twitter, offering “compensation” for users in an attempt to steal their funds.

Read now: 5 Best Deepfake Detection Tools

Protecting Your Business from Deepfakes

The rapid advancements in AI and machine learning promise a future where the deepfakes will be flawless. And, while that’s still a rarity, businesses need to strengthen their fraud detection systems to catch synthesized IDs and clone voices attempting to bypass multi-layered KYC checks. 

While there are telltale signs to detect deepfakes in many cases, here are three methods businesses can implement together to strengthen deepfake detection:

Anomaly detection

There are rare cases of perfect deepfakes. Even the seemingly flawless ones have subtle flaws that can be spotted through AI tools and verification systems. 

Some of these anomalies include: 

• Unnatural blinking, i.e. blinking too much or too little
• Out-of-sync lip and speech movement
• Inconsistent skin texture
• Distortion and flickering during head movements
• Lighting and shadow inconsistencies
• Sudden blurring, warping, or movement shift

Liveness checks

The Liveness verification check ensures that the person on the other end of the screen is a real person and not an AI-generated dupe. Passive liveness detection runs in the background without requiring user interaction, analyzing subtle details that deepfakes struggle to replicate.

💡 Pro tip: At HyperVerge, we highly recommend implementing single-image passive liveness checks, which include uploading a single image and nothing more! This makes the verification process super simple and effortless for the user, reducing the risk of drop-offs.

Ongoing monitoring

Deepfake threats don’t stop at onboarding. Fraudsters may use AI-generated content to bypass initial security checks and later modify their tactics to evade detection.

As a part of KYC implementation, businesses must consistently monitor the behavioral and transaction patterns of customers to detect suspicious activities. 

Some ongoing checks to detect deepfake include: 

• Periodic verification to ensure that user’s biometric data matches their original records
• Tracking unique device characteristics through device fingerprinting
• Scans for manipulated facial or voice data in ongoing interactions
• Flags inconsistencies in tone, speech, and background noise that may indicate voice cloning

Remember, deepfake technology and deepfake creators are continuously evolving to introduce sophisticated forms of AI-generated clones in the economy. 

The only way to stay ahead is by continuously updating fraud detection systems and keeping yourself abreast with the latest deepfake detection technologies.

Takeaways

The hyperrealism of deepfake is a growing concern. Deepfakes play on the natural human tendency to trust similar faces and voices making it easy for deceivers to deceive and manipulate. 

Businesses must implement advanced identity verification and deepfake detection tools to maintain the integrity of their systems and operations. 

Hyperverge’s fraud prevention solutions is a robust anti-fraud solution designed to safeguard your financial assets and preserve your reputation. It’s one tool you need to prevent fraud at every customer touchpoint. 

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FAQs

1. What are examples of deepfakes?

Examples of deepfakes range from something as satirical as TomCruise’s deepfake on TikTok to more deceptive cases like AI-generated political speeches (Vlamdir Putin declaring peace), fake news interviews, or voice-cloned scams to commit financial fraud.

2. Are deepfakes legal?

Deepfakes aren’t yet entirely illegal. Some countries have imposed bans or at least passed legislative acts against heinous deepfakes. Some of these acts include: 

• Deepfakes Accountability Act.
• Take It Down Act.
• Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act. 
• Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act

3. What are some good uses of deepfakes?

Some brilliant or excellent use cases of deepfakes include: 

• In the entertainment industry to de-age actors, create realistic digital doubles, and develop multiple language dubbings
• Deepfake videos to develop educational material
• Deepfake videos for employee training, product demos, and personalized marketing campaigns
• Voice cloning to help people with speech impairments

4. What is an example of deepfake phishing?

An example of deepfake phishing is when scammers use AI-generated voice or video to impersonate some existing person so that they can gather confidential details, and commit identity fraud or financial crime. It could be any malicious intent.