Deepfake Job Interview Candidate Shocks Recruiter

As AI technology develops, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between real and fake videos, particularly so-called “deepfake” videos.

Once used to falsify celebrity endorsements or disparage politicians, this technology has now reached the general public, leading to a new type of fraud in an odd setting: job interviews.

A recruiter posted a video of the eerie deepfake applicant she interviewed for a position.

For years, AI technology has been ruining employment and recruiting. Artificial intelligence has demonstrated a lack of ability to understand the subtleties of resumes, rejecting many applications for frequently absurd reasons. Even worse, it has been shown time and time again to worsen hiring prejudice.

However, the issues have escalated to a new level by making committing fraud during a job interview so easy. Tech recruiter Bettina Liporazzi, located in Argentina, recently shared her unsettling encounter with this phenomenon on LinkedIn, which quickly went viral.

“I’d seen stories about candidates faking their identity with AI and figured it might happen to me one day,” Liporazzi wrote in her post.

“Well, that day was today, only a few minutes ago.” After that, she posted a disturbing video of the candidate, who hardly appeared human.

Without a doubt, whoever did this was not using the best AI tools. The candidate did not seem to be able to move his head side-to-side, and his eyes seemed fixated on a sidelong gaze that was half closed. Staring at someone firmly positioned in the uncanny valley is like staring at a cyborg.

The deepfake candidate quickly canceled the call when Liporazzi requested him to wave a hand in front of his face.

Liporazzi knew how to react because she had been anticipating this day. She started by requesting the contestant to switch on his camera. According to what she wrote, the candidate claimed his camera was broken and only turned it on after she urged him to.

Asking the candidate to swivel their head side-to-side or remove their background or filter is one approach to expose the fraud further. This aligns with Liporazzi’s request that her candidate wave a hand in front of his face.

The video shows him not understanding the question as he asks whether there was a connectivity problem and whether he should log out and back into the meeting.

“You don’t need to join again,” Liporazzi replied, repeating her instructions. Then, the candidate abruptly hung up.

“I don’t know this person/group’s intentions, but I doubt they are good,” she said in her post.

“Many innocent people out there could fall for this because they have no idea that it is even remotely possible (both in and out of the workplace).”

Deepfake job interview fraud is expanding quickly as a method of interview cheating and a type of cybercrime.

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For a few years now, the cybersecurity company Regular Forensics has been monitoring the increase of deepfake video and audio scams. A shocking trend emerged from their 2024 analysis: 49% of the companies polled reported having been the victim of a deepfake video scam, compared to just 29% in 2022.

According to experts, deepfake job interviews are a recent development in which applicants attempt to take advantage of the increasingly competitive job market by engaging third parties to conduct their interviews and hide their identities with deepfakes.

Alternatively, interviewers use ChatGPT or Google to create responses to interview questions while hiding behind the deepfake avatar.

It would be simple to attribute this to the fact that the job search process is becoming increasingly complex, and recruiters love using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to further complicate it for employees.

However, deepfake job candidate scams are more than just dishonesty. Like the more complex telephone scams that use audio deepfakes, criminals are utilizing deepfakes to get positions that provide them access to private company data.

Last year, a North Korean cybercriminal used this method to attack a corporation, collecting salaries for four months before their crime was uncovered.

Despite the constant rhetoric about AI becoming “revolutionary,” the more it permeates our society, the more it appears far from primetime. It is a question of time until these scammers do something genuinely disastrous, so let us hope it is not too late.