AI Vocabulary · 07 When It Goes Wrong
What is Deepfake?
Realistic fake images, audio or video of real people or events, generated or manipulated with AI.
A deepfake is AI-generated or AI-manipulated media that looks or sounds authentic: a video of a person saying something they never said, a cloned voice on the phone, a convincing photo of an event that never happened. The tools to create them are now widely available.
Deepfakes are used for fraud, such as fake calls from a "CEO" asking for urgent payments, for disinformation and for harassment. The EU AI Act requires that deepfakes be disclosed as such, and labelling technologies are spreading, but detection remains imperfect.
Why it matters for you
Voice and video are no longer proof of identity. Payment approvals, password resets and sensitive instructions that rely on "I recognised the voice" are now a real risk for companies of any size.
Own it
Agree on verification habits before you need them: call back on a known number, use a code word for urgent requests, require a second approver for payments. If you create synthetic media yourself, label it clearly. That keeps your transparency and your reputation intact.
Where it comes from
The word first appeared in 2017 as the username "deepfakes" of a Reddit user who posted face-swapped videos made with deep learning. It reached the wider public in December 2017 through reporting by Samantha Cole at Vice (Wordorigins). "Deep" points to deep learning, the machine learning method behind the face swaps.
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