AI Deepfakes in Crypto are Getting Out of Control

The crypto industry is strongly battling with a surge in AI deepfake scams, which has swindled investors out of millions in recent months. 

It gets even scarier as generative AI tools are becoming more advanced as time progresses. Most industry players can’t help but continue to sound warnings, with the latest being blockchain payment firm, Ripple. 

Ripple Warns Against Deepfake Scams Impersonating Its CEO

Ripple made an X (formerly Twitter) post Thursday, warning about the alarming rate of AI deepfake scams that are impersonating the CEO, Brad Garlinghouse.

The company said Garlinghouse “is increasingly being used in deepfakes and other crypto scams promising free XRP giveaways,” usually on social media platforms, including YouTube and X.

In the videos, usually promoted as ads, the scammers use AI to clone Garlinghouse, promising XRP holders free airdrops or double-your-reward offers if they send certain amount of XRP to an address controlled by them.

In March, blockchain security platform Guardio reported a deepfake ad on X, impersonating Garlinghouse to lure unsuspecting investors into a fake Ripple website for a reward pool of 100,000,000 XRP. 

“Ripple will never ask you to send us XRP,” the company said on X Thursday. “Neither will Brad, David, Monica, Stu, or anyone from Ripple.”

AI Deepfakes Are a Big Problem for Crypto

AI deepfakes are a big problem for the crypto industry. Many crypto founders have sounded warnings about it, including Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy. On January 5th, Saylor said his security team removes deepfake ads of him from YouTube every 15 minutes. 

The number of deepfakes in the crypto industry increased by 128% in 2023 from the previous year, according to a recent survey. The growth is unsurprising, considering the proliferation of AI tools over the past year. 

In December, Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson warned that AI deepfake scams could become increasingly hard to distinguish in the next 12-24 months as generative AI tools become even better. 

“As predicted, Generative AI scams are now here,” Hoskinson precisely noted on X. “These will be dramatically better in 12-24 months and hard for anyone to distinguish between reality and the AI fiction.”

The problem of deepfake is not unique to the crypto space alone.

Earlier in February, scammers lured an employee of a multinational company into sending them $25.5 million using deepfaked images of the company’s executive during a video call. 

“I believe the fraudster downloaded videos in advance and then used artificial intelligence to add fake voices to use in the video conference,” said the victim, Baron Chan. “The people in the video conference looked like the real people.”