The term Phishing refers to a type of fraudulent email, text message, phone call, or website designed to trick users into sharing or revealing sensitive personal information such as credit card info, passwords, bank account numbers, login credentials, etc. 

Traditional phishing with emails, SMS, and social engineering is sneaky but it can be relatively easy to uncover if you know what to look for. A new kind of phishing using artificial intelligence (AI) deepfakes has emerged though, and this is way harder to spot. 

What is phishing through AI deepfakes?

Recently, AI has been used to create deepfakes and voice clones to modify the appearance or voice of scammers to request money or information. Creating a believable deepfake requires the use of AI, usually deep learning or a generative adversarial network.

Impersonating friends, relatives, colleagues, or superiors can prove effective to trick others into sharing personal data or performing given actions. 

Side-by-side images of original video and deepfake. Source: Facebook

Scammers tend to impersonate people you are familiar with or that have some authority over you – in other words, that you either trust or should listen to. For example, the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk. You may remember his famous deepfake that went viral in May 2022, promoting a crypto project called BitVex that turned out to be a scam (you can find the full deepfake video here).

Should you have doubts or have experienced any phishing attempt by an alleged Amber employee, please do not hesitate to report it to us via email at [email protected] or by contacting your Relationship Manager.