Written by Jonathan Dunnett
Deepfake Dangers Ahead
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Sora is Making me Lose Sleep
You know when you wake up in the middle of the night and have to somehow make a note because you don’t want to forget because it’s such a good point ? I woke up in the middle of the night this week and was thinking about the impact that deep fake technology is going to have a networking: spoiler, on some levels, it is really bad.
What’s the issue?
If you don’t know what Sora is, it’s a bit of a magical video maker from OpenAI. If you upload your likeness, ANYONE in the world can make you do anything… anything… grapple with that for a minute. Open AI CEO Sam Altman ended up stealing a bunch of stuff, apparently…
I Love Online Networking
As someone that does a whole lot of online networking, I really appreciate the ability to meet people in quick succession without having to travel to meet them in person. That of course doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy in person meetings, but if I wanted to have a meeting with someone from Argentina, I can meet them online or I can basically take the entire week and travel to Argentina and back: for the right person, that might be worth it, but, it’s prohibitive, for sure. My concern in terms of where technology is going, is that in the last few months, we’ve basically come to a place where we may not be able to believe our eyes: I wrote about this when Veo3 came out, and recently Sora launched, and it has further complicated life.
You’re in Jail?
One cyber security researcher that I follow shared a test video of himself, and in the video he was being arrested: many people reached out to him and were asking where to send the bail money (and they were serious). He has since deleted the post. So, what impact is that going to have as we look ahead on networking? What should you be thinking about?
- Where possible, get introduced to people by those that you trust. This has been a mantra for me for a very long time, but because we are in a dangerous place where anyone can look and sound like someone else, it’s so important that you assume that you basically cannot trust what you see and hear, and use strategies like trusted relationships to get introductions.
- Networking in most any context is a dance of sorts: you’re working towards a goal, they are working towards a goal and the goal might be something simple like they just want to meet you, or it might be something more significant like they want you to become a customer. What you need to be hypervigilant about is listening and watching for red flags. Do they build some trust and rapport and then start asking you for money? Did their grandmother get sick and all of a sudden you’re the only person that can help them? There’s a lot that we can learn from things like online dating scam prevention and unfortunately, we need to be thinking in this way as things go ahead.
- Even live video can be faked. It may not be 100% right now, but it’s getting to be very good. You may have seen news about North Korean IT workers getting busted by some smart people who realized that they were using a live deep fake technology: just because someone shows up on your Zoom call looking like your CEO doesn’t mean that you should automatically trust. There have been instances where hackers have used social engineering to move millions of dollars out of firms, and live deepfake technologies is just one more tool in their tool set.
We’ve come a long way in just four years… deepfakes used to be a lot harder: just ask Tom Cruise.
You might be asking, why did someone invent this technology? Couldn’t they see the problems that would come with this?
Unfortunately, this genie is out of the bottle and the only way to protect ourselves as we look ahead and to protect our relationships as to increase our technological skills, our awareness, and being oh-so-present.
Do you have concerns with Sora or other platforms? How are you thinking about this? I’d love to get your perspective over on LinkedIn.
Have a great week and feel free to follow along with me on LinkedIn for more! Jonathan