We hear of the Deepfake tool every now and then for the kind of realistic results it packs. This time, the deceiving technology was used to fool a European Union meeting.
The one making the real wrong use of the Deepfake tool played with the high command pretended to be a Russian leader. Authorities doubt that Kremlin operatives might have used the deepfake to obtain key information against Alexie Navalny’s opposition. The chair of the UK foreign affairs select committee was also the one who was fooled by the same guy and said that he suspects that Russia was behind the deepfaked meetings.
Apart from this, Rihards Kols, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Latvian parliament, also said that he was fooled recently with the use of the Deepfake tool. He posted a picture of Navalny ally Leonid Volkov with a screenshot from the video chat of the person who played Volkov but actually was someone deceiving the look of a Russian political figure. No one could really tell if it’s not real Volkov, seeing in the picture comparison below.
Kols received a video call invitation from the individual that played Volkov on his email; not knowing it was a scam, he connected to the fake Volkov’s meeting and discussed with him on Russia’s political prisoners and aggression against Crimea. Kols realized later that Volkov might not be the same user fooled and attended a Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Committee meeting and later became combative. By the time it was revealed as a scam, the individual had already connected and spoke with top-notch officials in the European Union.
“Quite a painful lesson, but perhaps we can also say thanks to this fake Volkov for this lesson for us and Lithuanian and Estonian colleagues,” Kols wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday. “It is clear that the so-called truth decay or post-truth and post-fact era has the potential to seriously threaten the safety and stability of local and international countries, governments and societies.”
Deepfake technology is getting better with time, and subsequently, the power for it to fool is getting stronger. The earlier tool used to recreate the deceased individuals has now graded up to be used as a scam to allow a false entry into sensitive high-command meetings. The tool is available online, and possibly anyone could use it for dark outcomes.
“Technological advances have opened many doors, connected us during the pandemic and improved the lives of millions of people,” Kols stated in a joint statement by the Chairs of the Estonian Foreign Affairs Committees, “but simultaneously machine learning and the evolution of deepfake technologies also means that the risks of these technologies being used by foreign and criminal cyber actors are becoming increasingly relevant.”