New research has shed light on the growing use of deepfakes spoofing current US government officials.
Research from Cybernews has claimed that over the last two years, there have been 156 deepfake incidents targeting currently-serving US officials, including President Trump and Vice President Vance.
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Deepfake growth
Cybernews’ research was based on data from the Resemble.ai deepfake incident database, which includes over 2,000 cases starting on March 11, 2024.
The report found President Donald Trump accounted for 90 of the 156 recorded instances alone, or 58% of all deepfake incidents in the dataset.
This is perhaps not too surprising, as Trump appears to be a particular fan of posting mocked-up or deepfaked images of himself in new roles or guises on his Truth Social network.
Marco Rubio (13 instances) and JD Vance (12 instances) came next, with the three making up nearly three-quarters of all reported cases.
The most targeted Democrat figure was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with 9 instances, followed by Amy Klobuchar (6 instances) and Hakeem Jeffries (5 instances).
These small numbers highlight how scammers utilize a selected group of highly-recognizable figures to capture interest and hook victims in.
The use of deepfakes is especially concerning as the US midterm elections draw ever closer, with scammers or hackers potentially using the technology to promote inaccurate or false views.
As always, we urge everyone to take extra care when viewing or clicking on potentially dubious online posts, especially if it is a site you don’t regularly view, or have never heard of.
Be particularly wary of sites asking for personal information, especially payment or card data.
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