Imagine you’re an inexperienced techie who wants to apply for a job at a company.
Let’s say you have a roommate or a friend who already has a job and a much better grasp on the hellish concept of job interviews, which make you shudder when you think about them.
What if you could just slap your face on to his body and have him do the interview instead? As long as no one knew the real tone of your voice, you would be all set. Enter the magical — and often dark — world of deepfakes!
A deepfake is a type of synthetic media in which a face of person in an existing image or a video is replaced with someone else’s likeness. The technology was developed in 1990s, but it became popular much later thanks to amateur online communities.
Deepfakes can range from funny and quirky to sinister and dangerous videos depicting political statements that were never given or events that never took place. It gets worse — deepfakes have been used for creating non-consensual pornography, hoaxes, bullying and more.
However, today I would like to focus on one particular and interesting application of the technology: pretending to be someone else in order to get a job.
Now, you may be wondering why anyone would do that — it seems like too much hassle, and a risky and stressful approach to getting an actual job. Unless … the reason to get a particular job isn’t to acquire gainful employment, but instead to gain access to the company’s infrastructure so you could divulge sensitive information.
In that case, you wouldn’t be a camera-shy introvert, but rather a tech-savvy social engineer/hacker, posing as someone else — someone qualified.
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