On an April afternoon, Sarah was scrolling Instagram as she came across a familiar face. The video featured Peter Hargreaves the co-founder of UK’s biggest investment platform, Hargreaves Lansdown. The advert promoting Whatsapp communities for exclusive stock picks seemed lucrative. Within minutes, Sarah shared her number and became part of a Whatsapp group. An investment app recommended in the group was downloaded. She was happily walking the road to riches aided by a “mentor” who told her when to buy which stocks.
Treading cautiously, Sarah started investing small sums- just £50 at first. With the app showing decent profits, she added to her portfolio until she earned a tidy £300 in profits on a total investment of £2000 in a mere two weeks. Then came the moment of truth – Sarah couldn’t transfer the profits to her bank account. She continued to pay the supposed taxes, regulatory fees and withdrawal charges only to find her “mentor” vanish and the investment app stop working.
Boom, EVERYTHING was gone as if it never existed. Sarah lost about £4000 by believing a deepfake of Peter Hargreaves. If not for the well-known stock picker’s face, Sarah wouldn’t have fallen for an investment scam. She was just one among the possibly hundreds of victims. Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky in it’s blog noted that more than 600 advertisements featuring deepfakes of Peter Hargreaves were found on the Meta platform.
The deepfake phenomena
Deepfakes are fake digital media – audio, video and images that are generated using Artificial intelligence(AI). Deepfake fraudsters ride on credibility of real people often public figures to manipulate, cheat or mislead others into action. Generative AI is the technology that enables cybercriminals to create hyper-realistic images, videos or audio to trick people online.
Over the past few years, Gen-AI has been utilized by bad actors for a range of objectives right from crypto currency scams, investment frauds, election manipulation and social media misinformation campaigns. GenAI has also enabled deepfake pornography on a massive scale. GenAI tools like Nudify apps that instantly convert innocuous Instagram posts into outrageous nude pics have become a nightmare for female social media users. Social media is flush with a slew of deepfake porn posted online every minute. While deepfake porn harms reputation, deepfake frauds that inflict financial losses have become ubiquitous.
In an incident in Canada, attackers began running an ad in the name of BMO Belski. Most Canadians identify the abbreviation “BMO” as Bank of Montreal and Brian Belski as the famous investment strategist at BMO. By assuming BMO Belski as the official financial advice from the oldest bank in Canada, unsuspecting Canadian users invested, and lost money.
Deepfakes frauds in India
In India too, there has been a massive spike in deepfakes. Deepfake videos of Bollywood actress like Rashmika Mandana and Alia Bhatt introduced Indians to this phenomena a few years ago. Later, deepfakes became routine as everyone right from Aamir Khan to Ranveer Singh started running to the police demanding action on the fake content circulating online. Journalist Rajat Sharma was so tired of finding his own viral deepfakes recommending weight-loss treatment and diabetes medicine that he approached the court to stop it for once and for all. Member of Parliament Hema Malini expressed concern about deepfakes and raised it in Parliament. Nothing provided respite. It appeared that wealth couldn’t protect you from deepfakes. Business leaders like Warren Buffet and Tim Cook are deepfaked in crypto currency scams. Tech genius Elon Musk was among the most deepfaked men. Political power couldn’t protect you either. Deepfakes of US President Donald Trump and Indian PM Narendra Modi have become too common in social media.
It’s not the rich-and-famous alone who are bearing the brunt of GenAI. A deepfake account created by a jilted lover against Archita Phukan aka Babydoll Archi made international headlines last month. It became a social media sensation that humiliated an innocent woman by projecting her as a porn alongside Kendra Lust. In November last year, Bengaluru residents were duped of Rs. 95 lakhs by deepfake videos of Narayana Murthy and Mukesh Ambani. Last week, a Pune man lost Rs.43 lakhs to share trading fraud after believing a deepfake of Narayana and Sudha Murthy. The Indian government’s massive awareness campaign against deepfakery and digital arrest suggests that huge number of ordinary citizens are falling prey daily. The cases are likely underreported for fear of embarrassment.
The Gen-AI threat to digital trust
The growth of deepfake menace have created a corresponding increase in trust deficit in the digital world. Over 5.07 billion people, or 62.6% of the world’s population, use social media platforms for communication and information access. On 27 June 2025, Nature published a study that concluded “Following news on social media boosts knowledge, belief accuracy and trust.” The surge of deepfake content posted on social media without any inhibitions threatens the accuracy of information online and jeopardizes the trust in social media platforms.
If the next video call with your colleague can plausibly be a criminal disguised in deepfake or the next Instagram video of Virat Kohli promoting a product isn’t the “real Kohli”, users are constantly on edge unable to separate fact from GenAI fiction. A shocking detail: Deepfakes continued to circulate in Meta platforms i.e Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp even when the public figure say Martin Wolf was enrolled in Meta’s new face recognition system designed to automatically detect and delete such content. It’s a sign that Big Tech’s like Meta and X haven’t quite figured out how to stop deepfake mess eroding faith in their platforms.
Installing deepfake detection tools at the system level is the only viable solution today. Deepfake awareness campaigns and AI detection capabilities should reach every nook and corner of the digital world. Until then, the likes of Rajat Sharma and Martin Wolf have no option but to continue crying hoarse that esoteric medicines and dubious investment schemes are being sold by their deepfake avatar. Your reality is at crosshairs as threat actors continue to weaponise GenAI and breach digital trust.