Fahmi Fadzil warns public of AI deepfake scams

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Communications minister Fahmi Fadzil has reportedly urged members of the public to be cautious of scams involving AI-generated deepfakes.

Speaking at the ministry of communication's monthly assembly, Fahmi said that while the use of AI helps the country's development, there are some parties who misuse the technology, reported The Star.

The minister reportedly referenced a scam in which a WhatsApp video call involving Malaysian singer Siti Nurhaliza ended up being a deepfake scam.

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Fahmi reportedly called on the national news agency Bernama and Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) to publicise and educate the public on the dangers of scam tactics using AI deepfakes.

On 15 July, Siti Nurhaliza revealed that a scammer has been attempting fraud using her name, picture and voice. In the deepfake video, the singer was seen asking users to bank in money in return for a gift or cash prize from her.

The singer came onto Instagram to say that she has never done such contests and urged users to not be deceived by the messages and video calls they receive.

Siti Nurhaliza added that there have been many cases of fraud using her name and that it has been going on for a long time. The singer added that such scams often target older people and senior citizens.

Deepfake in the APAC region has grown by an average of 1530% from last year, posing a threat to cyber security if the technology is misused, according to a December 2023 study by Sumsub.

It also found that the Philippines saw the largest increase in deepfakes at 4500%, while Hong Kong experienced a 1300% increase and Malaysia along with Singapore experiencing a 1000% and 500% increase respectively.

The report also found that deepfake technology usage was the top fraud trend due to the widespread accessibility of the technology to create highly realistic audio, photo, and video manipulations which deceive individuals and fraud prevention systems.

“Depending on their skills, fraudsters can try to deceive the system in a variety of ways—from simply wearing a mask to creating complex deepfakes, which use machine learning to either generate a fake persona or impersonate an existing person using manipulated photos and videos of them,” said Pavel Goldman-Kalaydin, head of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Sumsub.

Picture courtesy of Fahmi Fadzil/Instagram

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