Artificial intelligence was used on GMB today to create a fraud-style, Susanna Reid…
Today on Good Morning Britain, hosts Susanna Reid and Ed Balls were joined by fraud expert Simon Horsewell and Laura Noye from tech company Onfido as they discuss the rise in deep-fake AI scams, what to look out for and what to do if you are scammed before deep-faking Laura Noye live on air to look like Susanna Reid.
Showing Laura with Susanna’s AI filter, the two were shown side by side as Simon explained: “Deep-fakes aren’t particularly new. They’ve been around for a few years but in recent years they’ve become far more accessible to everybody. I think a lot of us are probably familiar with Snapchat filters and that type of thing and it’s the same type of technology. It’s free to everybody, it’s quite easy to get and from just one single still image of you which we found online, we’ve been able to create the deep fake that you are seeing.”
Responding to Susanna asking how we stop it, Simon continued: “There’s lots of things you can do. If we are talking from a consumer point of view, you have to be really aware of what some of the effects are with it. As you can see, it’s getting so much more convincing. You can do this now on video calls, which is where it’s different from some of the filters because we are doing this live, there is no processing involved.”
Simon explains how the scammers are now using AI deep fake software to replicate the face and voices of individuals to open bank accounts, access personal information and recreate documents such as passports and drivers licences of other people.
Asking Laura to move her head from side to side, Susanna shared concerns about the quality of the deep-fake and how her mum wouldn’t be able to tell if it was her on Facetime.
Asking how easy it would be to change a passport to look like her own, Simon responded: “With just a single photo that we have, which we found online, we can place that in front of the camera and if we look at the actual webcam footage, we can see that we have put your face to that document. So it’s all the other details but it’s your face on there.”
Ed Balls responds: “Oh my gosh… It’s not something the government is telling us much about. We get told lots of public messages about crime or about health but I have not heard the government tell us about identity fraud.”
Going live to the Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, Susanna claimed that it is not going to be long until an AI international security threat with Grant responding: “You’re absolutely right, the power of AI and how it can be used for things like the deep fakes which you have just been talking about is really revolutionary. It should be said actually that the UK is taking something of a lead in the way that AI and security works and the prime minister actually hosted the world’s first summit on that entire subject.
I think what is true is that people need to be educated about this and be on the lookout for it because it is so fundamental, it could change a lot. And of course, with a local election coming up we are very keen to make sure that that is run properly and fairly so of course, very important that measures are in place to warn people that what they’re seeing, unless it’s been verified, might not be right.”
Good Morning Britain weekdays from 6am on ITV1 & ITVX
