When voices and faces can be faked, trust a verification routine over your eyes and ears. The tactics and the habits that counter them.
Phone scams used to give themselves away with unfamiliar voices and awkward phrasing. Not any more. A few seconds from an online video or call recording can be enough to produce a similar voice, and a handful of photos can produce a video with someone's face swapped in. Spotting scam texts by their bad spelling no longer works either, because AI-written text is smooth and polite. Today, the fact that something looks and sounds real guarantees nothing.
The tactics may look new, but the structure is the same: pose as someone trustworthy, create urgency, and ask for money or information. These are the typical types that AI has made more convincing.
In 2024 in Hong Kong, a company employee sent a very large sum after being instructed to on a video call that appeared to include the head office finance chief and colleagues. It later emerged that every other participant in the call was a synthetic video. The employee had been suspicious at first but let the doubts go once familiar faces appeared on screen. The lesson is simple: a matching face and voice confirm nothing.
Synthetic video sometimes shows tells: odd blinking, lips out of sync with sound, blurry edges around the face, distortion when the head turns. Asking someone on a video call to pass a hand in front of their face or turn to show their profile is another known trick. But as the technology improves quickly, these tells are fading. Rather than relying on spotting them, it is safer to start from the assumption that you may not be able to tell.
If you cannot tell by looking, the answer is a verification routine: confirm the facts through a different channel from the one the request came through. The harder someone pushes with "right now" or "don't tell anyone", the more reason to stop. If it really is your family or your company, nothing terrible will happen in the few minutes you spend checking.
When a well-known business figure or entertainer recommends an investment in a video and invites you into a private messaging group, consider first that it may be synthetic. Celebrities personally pitching investments in private chats would be unusual, and promises of guaranteed principal or high returns are classic signs of fraud in themselves. If you receive an investment pitch, first check through the official lookup service whether the firm is registered with the financial regulator. This is not investment advice.
If you sent money, report it to the police immediately and ask both your bank and the receiving bank to freeze the payment; the sooner you act, the better the chance of recovery. If your face has been used in sexual synthetic content, do not deal with it alone: ask the police and a digital sex crime victim support organisation for help, including with removal. In Korea, making or distributing such fake videos is a crime, and a 2024 amendment made possessing or viewing them punishable too. Do not delete anything that could serve as evidence; save it.
Parents who do not use AI themselves are frequent targets of these scams. A single conversation before anything happens makes a big difference.
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