Episode 179: Deepfakes and the Capital Markets

This week, Josephine Gallagher, UK senior reporter at WatersTechnology, joins Wei-Shen on the podcast. They talk about the feature Josephine wrote about the proliferation of deepfakes (https://www.waterstechnology.com/management-strategy/4780806/the-proliferation-of-fake-information), and what it could mean for the capital markets. As firms increasingly turn to new and unique alternative data sources such as sentiment scores, and web scraping, they need to ensure the data they plug into their systems is authentic. 1:00 – Josephine joins the podcast to talk about what interested her the most about deepfakes. 3:00 – Then, they discuss two well-known deepfakes and how it’s near impossible to spot signs of tampering. 5:30 – Josephine and Wei-Shen then talk about an example that NICE Actimize’s Robert Tharle made on how criminals used a deepfaked voice of a CEO to steal $250,000. 6:30 – Does that mean firms need to implement multi-factor authentication or multi-factor authorization? 9:00 – They discuss how some big tech firms like Facebook and Google are creating tools to detect manipulated forms of media, and what is involved in that. 11:00 – How will these firms address the issue of scalability? 16:30 – Although not directly impacted by deepfakes as yet, why should financial institutions seriously consider this issue? 18:00 – They wrap up the podcast by talking about their separate vacations to Turkey, including some close run-ins with the local dogs and cats.