Real-time deepfakes are a dangerous new threat. How to protect yourself

Real-time deepfakes have been used to scare grandparents into sending money to simulated relatives, win jobs at tech companies in a bid to gain inside information, influence voters, and siphon money from lonely men and women. — Image by gstudioimagen on Freepik

You've probably seen deepfake videos on the Internet that inject facsimiles of famous people into odd or funny situations — for example, a fake Tom Cruise doing "industrial cleanup," or in a truly meta effort, an artificial Morgan Freeman hyping "the era of synthetic reality."

Now imagine receiving a phone call from someone who sounds exactly like your child, pleading for emergency help. Same technology, but no one's laughing.