Imagine getting a call from your CEO – but it’s not really them. A perfect copy of their voice, paired with a lifelike image, fools you into a costly mistake. This isn’t a plot from Black Mirror; it’s happening now with deepfakes and AI-driven fraud. In Part 2 of our series for business owners in Liverpool, the North West, and North Wales, we shift from personal privacy to business risk. When your images (or those of your staff and brand) go online, malicious actors can misuse them in alarming ways. Let’s explore how “giving away your face” can lead to deepfake scams, brand impersonation, data breaches, and real-world damage.
Deepfakes: Beyond Fun to Fraud
By now, many have seen entertaining deepfake videos – like famous actors’ faces swapped in movies – and had a good laugh. But deepfake tech has a dark side for businesses. Criminals are using AI to clone voices and images to impersonate real executives and employees. In one infamous case, fraudsters used AI voice cloning to mimic a CEO’s voice and convinced a UK company’s director to transfer $243,000 to a fake supplier trendmicro.com. The voice was so convincing that the director truly believed his boss was instructing the transfer. That was 2019’s wake-up call that deepfakes can directly hit the corporate bank account.
Fast forward, and these attacks have only become more sophisticated. Just last year, the CEO of WPP (the world’s largest advertising firm) was targeted by an elaborate deepfake scheme. Scammers set up a video meeting using a fake WhatsApp profile with the CEO’s photo, then during the call they deployed an AI-cloned voice and even deepfake video snippets to impersonate him theguardian.com. Their goal? To trick an agency leader into a bogus new venture and siphon funds. Luckily it failed that time theguardian.com – but many firms haven’t been as lucky. A Hong Kong company wasn’t so fortunate when a deepfake video call of their CFO led to a $25 million loss in a fraud scheme trendmicro.com.
These examples underscore a chilling point: your images and voice can be weaponized against you or your business. All it takes is a publicly available photo (say, your LinkedIn headshot) and a sample of your voice from a conference video. With that, attackers can create a video or audio that looks and sounds like you. If your face data is also floating around from an AI app, it’s even easier – those services provide high-quality, front-facing images that are perfect deepfake fodder.
Brand Impersonation and Reputation Risks
It’s not only internal finances at risk – your brand’s reputation can be hijacked with AI. Consider how a bad actor might use your company logo and an image of you (the owner) to create a fake social media profile or a misleading advertisement. We’re already seeing this with public figures: deepfakes of Elon Musk have been used to promote cryptocurrency scams cbsnews.com dfrlab.org. Now imagine a scammer making a deepfake of you welcoming customers to a fake investment scheme, or a phony video of your CEO making false announcements. For customers or partners who don’t know better, that deepfake press release or video could trick them into clicking malicious links or believing wrong information.
Such impersonation can wreak havoc. Years of building trust in your brand can be undermined overnight by a convincing fake. If a fraudulent deepfake message circulates – say an announcement that your company is recalling products or a bogus “personal” appeal from you asking for charitable donations – the damage control falls on you. You’ll spend days reassuring people it wasn’t real, by which time the scam may have already hurt some victims and your company’s name.
Remember, deepfakes thrive on stolen images and footage. The more of your face (and key staff faces) that are freely available online, the easier it is for attackers to create believable fakes. Handing over your photos to an AI generator might also provide a would-be imposter with multiple stylized versions of your face (from different angles, in different lighting), effectively a portfolio to train their deepfake model. It’s an unintended consequence few consider in the moment of “wow, this avatar looks cool.”
Data Breaches and Unintended Exposure
Business risks aren’t always as dramatic as deepfake fraud, but they can be just as damaging in the long run. When you upload images to a third-party AI service, you’re trusting that provider to secure your data. What if they don’t? A data breach at the AI avatar company could leak a trove of user photos. If your photo is among them, it could end up in all kinds of unwanted places.
Consider the sensitivity: some photos people upload aren’t meant for public eyes (perhaps you tried an avatar app with an ID badge photo or an internal team picture). If those get breached, not only is personal privacy violated, but potentially company-sensitive information could leak too. For example, an innocuous team selfie might reveal your office layout, security badges, or whiteboards with strategy notes in the background. Once uploaded, you have no deletion guarantee beyond the provider’s word. If their databases get hacked, that image data is in the wild. Facial data, in particular, is a hot target – it can be used to cross-reference social media, build fake identities, or train surveillance AI without consent.
There’s also the risk of violating others’ privacy and causing a breach that way. If an employee uploads a group photo to an AI tool without colleagues’ consent, that could constitute an internal data breach of personal data. It only takes one well-meaning staff member experimenting with a new AI app to put your company in a tricky situation.
Real World Consequences: Cautionary Tales
To drive it home, let’s summarize a few real incidents:
- Executive Voice Scam: An employee wired £200k because a deepfake voice on the phone impersonated his boss convincingly trendmicro.com. Money gone, luckily no one got fired – but the embarrassment and lesson remain.
- Fake CEO Video Call: Attackers deepfaked a video meeting with a top exec, attempting to authorize a fraudulent project funding theguardian.com. Imagine your manager “on video” telling you to ignore procurement rules and just pay an invoice – would you catch the fraud?
- Major Financial Loss: $25M evaporated from a company’s coffers in Hong Kong via a deepfake of their CFO trendmicro.com. That kind of hit can shutter a business or at least heads will roll in IT/security for failing to prevent it.
- Brand Hijack: Scammers use AI to mimic famous CEOs (Musk and others) to peddle scams cbsnews.com. While your business might not be global-famous, locally you are known – which could be enough for targeted impersonation in our region.
The takeaway for business owners is clear: misused images can directly impact your bottom line and trustworthiness. This isn’t just hype to scare you – it’s verified by the surge in corporate-targeted deepfake attacks in the past year theguardian.com. Criminals always look for the easiest way in, and tricking a human via a fake face or voice can be much easier than hacking through technical defences.
In the next part of our series, we’ll navigate the legal landscape – what UK laws (like GDPR) say about uploading images to AI tools and how that affects your business. Spoiler: your fun selfie could turn into a compliance headache. Stay tuned.
Hilt Digital Solutions prides itself on a no-nonsense approach to cybersecurity. We help businesses in Liverpool and across the North West stay ahead of threats like deepfakes and social engineering. If you’re concerned about brand impersonation or the fallout of AI misuse, our team brings value-first insights and practical defenses – from employee training to secure cloud solutions. We’re here to be your trusted cyber and cloud assurance partner in this new era of AI risks.