As deepfakes—AI-generated fake digital assets mimicking real people and identity documents—gain traction, they’re becoming an increasing threat. Due to the democratization of generative AI tools, deepfakes are spreading rapidly across industries, affecting businesses of all sizes and setting new identity verification trends.
In this article, based on Regula’s expertise and the latest data, we explore why deepfakes are emerging as one of the biggest threats in recent years. How are they impacting businesses, and how are companies fighting back?
Key takeaways
In 2024, half of all businesses have experienced fraud involving audio and video deepfakes.
Additionally, 66% of leaders believe deepfakes pose a serious threat to their business.
Meanwhile, 58% of companies encounter “traditional threats”—fake or altered physical documents—in their systems.
Why are deepfakes the focus of the study?
Deepfakes are increasingly being used in fraudulent activities, and concern is growing as the technology becomes more advanced and affordable. Criminals can now easily create convincing fake identities and perform presentation attacks, such as displaying a deepfake on a screen during verification.
This presents a serious challenge for online identity verification (IDV) across many industries. To understand which types of deepfakes businesses encounter most and how they combat this threat, we conducted a study across five countries, including the US, Germany, Singapore, the UAE, and Mexico, across industries like Aviation, Crypto, Financial Services, Healthcare, and more.
In our previous study published in early 2023, we identified deepfake fraud as one of the challenges businesses had to address. These new deepfake survey results allow us to observe how this trend is evolving, plus showcase different approaches and perceptions of this threat from companies of various sizes around the world.
Global overview: Which countries are most affected?
In the past 12 months, 92% of businesses worldwide experienced identity fraud, a figure consistent with Regula’s 2022 research on emerging identity fraud trends. The key difference now is the growing prevalence of deepfake fraud.
The 2024 survey, which includes a larger sample size and additional regions, shows that 49% of companies experienced both audio and video deepfakes, up from 37% and 29% respectively in 2022.
In 2024, companies are experiencing more deepfake fraud compared to 2022.
Interestingly, 44% of businesses had already identified video deepfakes as a growing threat two years ago. Now, they show the largest increase— 20%—compared to other forms of sophisticated identity fraud.
Note! Easily accessible generative AI tools have become a new weapon for fraudsters.
This issue affects most businesses in the UAE and Singapore, where over 50% of companies have encountered deepfakes in their systems. Mexican companies appear less affected by this threat.
Importantly, deepfakes are just one of many challenges businesses must address. Let’s take a closer look.
Fake or modified identity documents
Despite technological advances in recent years, a significant number of counterfeit or fraudulently modified physical IDs continue to be detected globally.
Note! Identity document counterfeiting remains a key threat for companies worldwide.
This “old” problem is particularly prevalent in Mexico (70%), UAE (66%) and Germany (59%). Notably, the German passport is one of the most frequently updated identity documents in the EU, highlighting the severity of this issue at the state level.
Physical IDs remain a key part of the identity verification process in many companies that fraudsters use.
Synthetic identity fraud
Over half of UAE businesses (51%) struggle with synthetic identities, which fraudsters exploit for online scams. This problem is also critical for the US businesses (49%) where criminals often create a fake “person” to target banks and financial services companies by combining real and fake identifiers, such as Social Security numbers (SSNs).
Synthetic identity fraud is also prevalent in Mexico (43%), Germany (41%), and Singapore (39%), where mobile banking is widely used.
Synthetic identity fraud, once a major threat primarily for US businesses, is now becoming a global issue.
[New insights are on the way!]
