Deepfakes: The Technology Behind Fraud’s Newest Weapon

Opening Part VIII of How Not to Get Scammed by AI Trading Apps, Felix Bick tackles social engineering broadly, starting with one of its most technically sophisticated tools: deepfake technology, covered in Chapter 66.

Bick describes what deepfakes actually are and how they’ve been weaponized: AI-generated synthetic video and imagery that convincingly depicts real people saying or doing things they never did, has been used to fabricate fake celebrity and executive endorsements of fraudulent investment platforms, as well as to impersonate trusted contacts in targeted fraud attempts against specific individuals.

The chapter is honest about the state of detection technology, which is important given how quickly this space evolves: the technology has advanced to the point where detection through casual visual inspection is increasingly unreliable, particularly in short video clips shared without context, though certain artifacts — unnatural blinking patterns, lighting inconsistencies, audio-visual sync issues — can sometimes still be identified by trained reviewers or specialized detection tools.

Given this trajectory, Bick’s recommended defense is structural rather than purely technical: verifying any investment endorsement or unusual request through an independent, previously established communication channel — a known phone number, a verified official account — rather than trusting video or audio content in isolation, regardless of how convincing it appears.

This structural-over-technical framing is one of the book’s most important strategic insights, since it gives readers a defense that doesn’t degrade as deepfake technology continues to improve. Rather than trying to spot ever-more-subtle visual artifacts, readers are taught to verify through channels the technology can’t fake.

For anyone navigating a media environment where video and audio evidence can no longer be automatically trusted, this chapter of How Not to Get Scammed by AI Trading Apps offers Felix Bick’s essential, forward-looking guidance.