The perils of AI are becoming clearer by the day - particularly how the technology can mimic real people.
So-called 'deepfake' tech has already hit the headlines a heap of times thanks to explicit videos made to look like celebrities without their consent, but a new report showcases how it could be used for a whole new type of crime.
An employee at the Hong Kong branch of an unnamed multinational company was reportedly duped by a sophisticated deepfake scam recently, costing their company around HK$200 million (US$25.6 million).
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According to the South China Morning Post, the employee received a message that appeared to be from the company's chief financial officer, based in the UK, and hopped onto a video conference call that he thought was with the company's CEO along with a bunch of other top execs.
It turns out in reality that these were all deepfakes, mimicking both the voices and appearances of the individuals - all sourced from publicly available content.
The instructions on that call reportedly led the employee to make around 15 financial transfers to different accounts, totalling around $25 million - a massive black hole of money that doesn't seem to have been recovered at this point.
Local police said that a couple of other employees were approached in the same way, so it looks like it took multiple tries before the scammers got their mark.
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The employee apparently did have moments of doubt, but was convinced by the video conference call - and it took around a week before they got suspicious enough to report the whole situation.
This is pretty scary stuff - many of us doubtless know that we could probably be fooled the same way if we got on a call with someone who looked and sounded like our boss and demanded we do a few tasks.
That said, the police in Hong Kong have issued pretty smart advice as a result - namely, that like any scam-mitigation approach, we should all be very wary when asked to make financial transfers of any kind.
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Asking the person some questions to verify their identity might feel awkward, but if it saves you from losing your company $25 million, it's probably worth a little weirdness on a call - and if that fails, getting people to move their heads to the side a bit can make it way more obvious when deepfake tech is being used, as flickering and blurring can often occur.