Online Fakery and Digital Bank Runs Are a Scary Mix
There’s no regulatory toolkit to confront deepfakes and misinformation.
A fake image of Pope Francis generated by AI (left); a real photo of Pope Francis (right).
Source: r/midjourney via Reddit.com created using Midjourney v5; photographer: Grzegorz Galazka/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images
Hackers crack the Twitter account of the Associated Press. They post a tweet: Two explosions at the White House, the president is injured. The S&P 500 instantly drops 1%. Sound like fiction? This happened almost exactly a decade ago. Thankfully, the market recovered quickly after Barack Obama’s press secretary confirmed no explosions and no injury.
The world of online fakery has moved on a lot since then -- and not for the better. Advances in artificial intelligence have made more sophisticated chatbots and bogus photos and videos easier to produce and propagate. Meanwhile, bankers are quickly realizing that people can move their money faster than ever before through a few quick taps on their smartphones. Everyone, everywhere needs to be as vigilant as possible to the potential for catastrophic cons in finance right now. Markets are already skittish and depositor psychology is unsettled.