Deepfakes are digital forgeries. They are highly credible multimedia representations of altered or fabricated events, created using sophisticated artificial intelligence techniques. The paper describes the various applications of deepfake generation technology, with a focus on the threats it poses to the financial sector. Moreover, it outlines a set of policy instruments for the effective countering of malicious deepfakes.
The paper examines four main strands of intervention to curb the risks resulting from deepfakes, namely protecting the truthfulness of contents, the systemic stability of the institutions, consumers and privacy. It also provides insights on how deployment of technological measures could in principle enable some critical issues to be overcome that, as of today, prevent the effective and coordinated countering of the phenomenon on an international scale.
