Mark Twain is supposed to have said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on. It’s tempting to reflect that this is more true than ever. New technology, including generative artificial intelligence (AI) means companies — as well as individuals — are more vulnerable to fraud than ever.

But let us not overestimate the novel capacity of the internet to quickly and anonymously spread untruths. Even hundreds of years ago, they could spread in a few hours, with disastrous consequences. One example of many is an incident in London in May 1803. As Britain was preparing to declare war on France, a letter was hand-delivered to the Lord Mayor of London, allegedly written by Lord Hawkesbury, president of the Board of Trade, and bearing his personal seal. The letter claimed that the dispute with France was amicably settled. When the Mayor took the letter to the Stock Exchange to share the joyous news, stocks immediately rose 5%. The letter was quickly identified as a forgery and the Treasury sent a press release warning of the hoax to the editors of the London evening papers. But it was too late. Many stocks had changed hands at inflated rates. All attempts to identify the perpetrator of the hoax failed.

The deliberate spreading of mistruths is nothing new; humans are prone to gossip, and sensible people have always known to rely on “trusted” sources. But now, three developments make the spread of disinformation (and the associated financial fraud that can come with it) more alarming. First is the decline of the trustworthiness of high-profile disseminators of information. Second is the shift to images, both moving and still, in taking precedence over the written word for delivering information good and bad, at least to the general public. Thirdly, creating a digital fake of any kind got a lot cheaper lately, with the widespread advent of generative AI.

That means the introduction of “deepfake” video technology — which has also recently gotten much, much better — easily puts a similar power in the hands of bad actors as that Lord Hawkesbury impersonator. Most people with a discerning eye and a healthy capacity for critical thinking dismissed the 2019 deepfake video purporting to show a slurring Nancy Pelosi, because it wasn’t very convincing. But if you didn’t already know the movie Back to the Future, would you really be able to tell this was a fake?

There’s also a risk from doctored audio, as this recent attempt to subvert the New Hampshire primaries by creating a robocall that sounded like President Biden, discouraging registered Democrats from voting, proves. Add to this the dogged refusal of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to stamp out “phone spoofing,” by which a fraudster can appear to be calling you from a company with whom you do business, or the ease with which someone can set up an email account that, also, looks like it belongs to a legitimate business partner. 

A deepfake video that went viral on social media could in theory sink your company’s reputation, causing economic damage. But, because businesses still interact very largely by email and phone, online and audio fakes present some of the biggest threats to business, including the supply chain business. 

Read More: Deepfake Fraud Attempts on Business on the Rise

As The Economist’s deputy editor, Tom Standage, pointed out in a recent podcast, really convincing deepfake videos cost a lot of skill and money to make, and are therefore often the work of malicious nation states, such as North Korea and Russia. But it’s not all politics. People lie because they want something, usually money. Fake audio is already cheaper, and AI makes all forms of fakery not only far more sophisticated and hard to detect, but hugely cheaper in terms of time and resources. Businesses that were previously too small to have to worry about elaborate fraud schemes now face the reality that there is almost no barrier to entry for the criminal looking to con you.

Right now, there is a very real risk that your accounts payable department is receiving fraudulent invoices via email, or debt-collection calls on the phone. Or that someone is trying to impersonate a member of your staff with the authority to release cargo or buy parts. (That’s not to mention phishing attempts, ransomware and other cybercriminal activities.)

As the Institute of Supply Chain Management (ISCM) warned in February 2024, the increased digitization of the logistics sector, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has created “exponentially larger and more vulnerable attack surfaces” between parties throughout supply chains.

DarkReading.com points to four main ways adversaries are using commonly available AI tools such as ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Midjourney: automated phishing attacks, impersonation attacks, social engineering attacks, and fake customer support chatbots.

“Fundamentally, one of the biggest underlying issues of the current cyberattack epidemic is an alarming lack of proper cyber security knowledge,” says the ISCM. “It is a problem that affects all parties within a given supply chain, and to prevent more attacks from manifesting, it’s up to those who have access to the knowledge and infrastructure to educate, inform, and assist those without such luxuries.”

While technology and cybersecurity companies are successfully creating "good AI" to combat "bad AI," there’s no substitute for workforce training and awareness. Everyone in your organization should be aware, and prepared to ask enough questions to ensure they’re dealing with who they think they are, especially before money changes hands. Only so much technology can protect you from being insufficiently cautious.

Ironically, the attribution of the quote to Mark Twain is itself a piece of misinformation. He’s credited with saying it in 1919, which would be quite a feat, considering he died in 1910. Perhaps the best original version of the sentiment comes from the satirical English writer, Jonathan Swift: “…if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”