The number of artificial intelligence deepfake attacks in the corporate world has surged over the past year, reports the Guardian. Once used primarily for online harassment, pornography and political disinformation, AI voice clones have fooled banks, duped financial firms out of millions, and put cybersecurity departments on alert. 

Recently, the head of the world’s biggest advertising group, WPP, was the target of an elaborate deepfake scam that involved an artificial intelligence voice clone. 

Fraudsters created a WhatsApp account with a publicly available image of WPP CEO, Mark Read, and used it to set up a Microsoft Teams meeting that appeared to be Read with another senior WPP executive, according to an email obtained by the Guardian. During the meeting, the imposters deployed a voice clone of the executive as well as YouTube footage of them. The scam, which was unsuccessful, targeted an “agency leader,” asking them to set up a new business in an attempt to solicit money and personal details.

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In another high-profile example, an executive of the defunct digital media startup Ozy pled guilty to fraud and identity theft after it was reported he used voice-faking software to impersonate a YouTube executive in a bid to fool Goldman Sachs into investing $40m in 2021.

In February 2024, Hong Kong police announced the launch of an investigation, after an employee at an unnamed company claimed she was duped into paying HK$200m (£20m) of her firm’s money to fraudsters in a deepfake video conference call.