The threat of deepfakes is at an all-time high because advances in deepfake technology make them more convincing than ever. Cybercriminals find it easier than ever to create fake videos, audios, images, and documents.
In our 2025 State of Identity Fraud Report, AuthenticID surveyed businesses about deepfake and generative AI fraud and discovered that 46% saw a year-over-year increase, and 50% reported consistent levels. Nearly all (96%) perceive the misuse of those technologies as a threat to their businesses.
Experts say that generative AI may cause fraud losses to increase to $40 billion by 2027. Read more to uncover what to expect and how you can most effectively defend your organization.
Beware of Sophisticated Deepfake Attacks
Sophisticated deepfake technologies use AI to create or edit videos and other media to convince people that what they’re seeing and hearing is real, though it never happened as depicted. Often, deepfake criminals use a real person’s likeness to trick individuals.
One common deepfake method is a presentation attack, meaning a cyberattacker spoofs the appearance or characteristics of someone to convince viewers of their identity or to gain unauthorized access to a secure system or network. An injection attack involves “injecting” a system with malicious code, allowing deepfakes to bypass the system’s fraud detection tools.
How Cybercriminals Weaponize Deepfake Technology
Once known for impersonating celebrities and disseminating political propaganda, deepfake attacks are now a threat across industries. These are a few of the ways cyberattackers are causing harm to organizations:
Fraud
Social engineering attackers use deepfakes to convince decision-makers and consumers that fraudulent offers or deals are real. For example, scammers faked the likenesses of billionaires to get investors to send funds to cryptocurrency scams.
In one instance, fraudsters deepfaked company executives on a video call to convince an employee to send approximately $25 million. In another case, impersonators tried to manipulate an employee into setting up a new business.
Corporate sabotage
Saboteurs can manipulate public opinion by spreading misinformation about a business, its products, or executives. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security warns that deepfakes can be used to “negatively affect a company’s place in the market, manipulate the market, unfairly diminish competition, negatively affect a competitor’s stock price, or target prospective mergers & acquisition (M&A) of a company.”
Extortion and blackmail
Cyberattackers may threaten to release a deepfake if they are not paid a fee or ransom. Companies faced with defamation may feel pressure to pay even if a video is fake because they worry about their reputation and whether they can prove the content is fake.
The consequences of these attacks can be serious for both companies and individuals. They can cause extreme financial damage, emotional distress, and harm to brands and reputations.
Take Steps to Protect Against Deepfakes in 2025
As deepfakes become more realistic and difficult to detect, they also become more challenging tocombat. To counter attacks, organizations need sophisticated safeguards. These are some ways you can mitigate the risks of deepfake attacks and worry less.
- Be proactive with system monitoring and security patches.
- Implement zero-trust practices like least privilege access and multi-factor authentication.
- Build a strong cybersecurity culture and develop incident response plans.
- Choose a holistic identity verification platform (IDV) with AI-driven deepfake detection.
AuthenticID’s solutions offer powerful features for verifying identities. Additionally, our Injection Attack Solution uses proprietary algorithms to detect visual fraud, text fraud, and behavioral anomalies during verification processes.
Schedule an AuthenticID demo to uncover powerful tools that can detect and protect against deepfakes.