More thoughts on deepfakes.

[Wayne]

in the last blog post I mentioned I was off to a university to discuss sextortion for a paper. During it, the subject of deepfakes was brought up in regards the future of sextortion. Here's what we're thinking right now. Sextortion is in most cases a very quick and simple scam to run. The effort and time that would be needed to create a fake video of someone would make it prohibitive in most cases. What would be the point in doing it to a teen in college who has no money to send anyway. However, faking up a photo is a much more viable option. I believe (and I may be proved wrong) that the cases where deepfaked sextortion videos are used will be on those the scammers believe to have much more disposable income and more to lose if a video did come out. As an example, it'd be far more likely to happen to someone with a job and a wife/children. This is of course pure speculation at the moment. As we get further down the road we'll see what does actually happen. If I've predicted correctly, remember you heard it here first. If I'm wildly off, then what do I know anyway, right? It is after all nothing more than guesswork. That's how it's done though. We look at the history of scamming, look at the current and emerging technologies and then make an educated guess based on them about what'll happen in the future.