Be very careful!
There have been swindlers around forever. AI is just a new tool.
Yes, you can be fooled. Watch this video.
Do not presume that what you see is true; presume it’s false. If it turns out to be true, that is a pleasant surprise.
And that’s a whole lot better than the surprise you’ll get if you presume a fake was real.
I'm disconnecting more and more from just about everything. You can't even trust half of what you see.
It's great that you and others are calling attention to the ever more convincing scams. Unfortunately things are going to get much worse when the bowky-based botnets start proliferating.
But these videos all offer a non-solution as though it's a remedy: "Be on guard! Recognize the fakes!" - right after showing how difficult it is even for experts to recognize the fakes.
An anecdote will illustrate why we need to do better. Every year I go to the AGC and RSA cybersecurity conferences in San Francisco and the many evening parties sponsored by exhibitors. At the parties, I'll arrange to chat over a beer with a CISSP-certified security expert. After a while I'll say (disingenuously, yes) "You know, I have to admit, I've clicked on an occasional bad link and bad email attachment..."
Over fifty per cent of the time, the person I'm talking to, you know, the expert whose job is to educate their organization's staff to watch for and recognize phishing emails, bad links and bad attachments, will respond, "Yeah, I know, I've done that too..."
So there's a quick assessment of the value of eternal vigilance to fight fakes: It does not work. Full stop.
The sad thing is that there exists a very well set of proven solutions to the problem of fakes, and it's based on the same technology that you, dear reader, are using right now, as evidenced by the "htttps://" that starts the address for this page. But SSL / TLS, as is so often the case, has been deployed by technologists who have less of an understanding of the real world they're protecting their users from than the typical user themselves. SSL/TLS rely on sources of authority (certification authorities) which, like StartCom, can be, and are, bought and sold. (Gee, can you guess what buyer might be particularly interested in a CA that's known for its integrity?) But the technologists who came up with the cite certificate system tended not to understand such real world opportunities for corruption. (Search StartCom for the grim details.)
While the technologists beg to be guided by people with a wider understanding of the problem they've been asked to solve, typically the user recoils from the thought of learning enough of the technology to know what's possible and how it can be applied.
Again, we can SOLVE the problem, but it requires doing things differently. Stay tuned, I'm being summoned to a family event but will continue.