A new study reveals that a significant portion of Russians are unfamiliar with deepfake technology, even as large businesses are increasingly targeted by fraudulent attacks utilizing it.
A survey conducted by MTS Link among a thousand residents of Russian major cities has uncovered a worrying trend: 48 percent of respondents are unaware of what deepfakes are. Concurrently, 30 percent of employees in large companies have already encountered fraud based on this technology.
The medium-sized business sector proved most vulnerable, while micro-enterprises reported no such attacks. The primary channels for these scams were identified as popular messengers Telegram and WhatsApp.
Pavel Potekhin, Executive Director of MTS Link, emphasized the gravity of the threat: “A successful attack where fraudsters impersonate a company executive can lead to losses of millions of rubles for the company.” Experts recommend implementing corporate platforms with integrated anti-fraud solutions as a countermeasure.
Deepfakes are realistic video, audio, and image content created using artificial intelligence, almost indistinguishable from genuine material. The majority of those surveyed (64 percent) encountered deepfakes in entertainment content, and 27 percent in advertising. However, nearly one in five (19 percent) reported encountering fabricated voices of friends or relatives, and 18 percent — of superiors or colleagues.
Clement Ashworth 
Barnaby Whitfield