Why Booz Allen’s CTO used generative AI to make a deepfake video of himself

He created a deepfake of himself

This week, Vass will mote a 30-second deepfake where “he” briefly speaks to the camera to show Booz Allen employees and other workers how easy it is to create fake audio and content

Vass contends that generative AI nology has gotten so advanced that a refrain, “believe none of what you hear and half of what you see,” isn’t cynical enough. “You’re at a point with AI and these deepfakes where you are not going to be able to believe any you see or audio you hear,” Vass says

The deepfake of Vass will be moted internally at Booz Allen so that employees “better understand the capabilities and how strong a deepfake can be,” he adds

Booz Allen has previously trained workers to spot deepfakes by showing s of celebrities, who tend to be easy targets given the vast minence of their ness in the public domain

But there are also hours upon hours of and audio of Vass uploaded to YouTube, and it only takes a couple of minutes of content for criminals to make a deepfake that can trick workers

The stunt deepfake of Vass was created by Booz Allen in partnership with Reality Defender, a deepfake detection company that sells tools to identify AI-generated content within seconds to clients including IBM, Visa, and Comcast

Vendors Reality Defender are betting that cesses for authenticating audio and interactions will become as essential as other cybersecurity tactics multi-factor authentication, a two-step verification cess, and zero-trust authentication, which requires continuous verification of identity

Alex Lisle, who became CTO at Reality Defender last week, says there is a growing list of risks CEOs and other C-suite executives must confront when it comes to deepfakes

While much of the attention is on social engineering cyberattacks that prey on workers, cybercriminals can also use AI to craft audio files where a CFO “announces” manipulated earnings results, which could move the stock

AI s can be generated that depict a CEO issuing a fake public statement that could hurt a brand’s reputation. “Un other emerging cybercriminal threats, which require an incredible amount of nical knowledge and foresight, this doesn’t,” Lisle says

Deepfakes, he adds, can be done with “off-the-shelf software and a basic knowledge of nology.” Top executives at WPP, Accenture, and Ferrari have been targeted by deepfakes, though in the corporate world, the banking sector is a favored target

Half of finance fessionals in the U.S. and U.K. have reported that they’ve experienced an attempted deepfake scanning attack

To avoid these types of scams, chief information security officers and other nologists have been in defensive systems and better employee training to detect attacks

The Department of Defense would hire external parties to attempt attacks, and Vass says it always amazed him how many times those teams would succeed, even after all of the training

He recalls another incident at a startup he led, where a former employee sent a deepfake that was purportedly sent from Vass, while also pretending to loop in the CFO

Generative AI, Vass adds, will only make cases these all that more common. “People are going to have to learn to change their psyche to be more skeptical.” John Kell Send thoughts or suggestions to CIO Intelligence here

Samsung has agreed to make AI chips for electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla under a multiyear deal that is billed as a major win for the South Korean electronics giant’s U.S. foundry

Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed on his social media platform X that Samsung’s new Texas semiconductor plant would be dedicated to making the auto company’s next-generation AI6 chip, which is expected to be used in humanoid robots, self-driving cars, and AI data centers, reports WSJ

The win is huge for Samsung, which has lost ground in chip manufacturing, most notably to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which holds roughly two-thirds of the global foundry market and reportedly still can’t meet all demand

Anthropic is in talks with numerous investors raising as much as $5 billion in a funding round that would value the four-year-old AI developer at $170 billion, according to the Financial Times

Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for .Walmart is “all in” on AI agents

Retail behemoth Walmart last week rolled out the company’s vision for how AI agents will overhaul the way customers shop, the ways that corporate and store employees work, and how vendors sell and track their merchandise performance within the Walmart ecosystem

This range of four AI agents, displayed at a media event att by Fortune, included a generative AI digital assistant named Sparky that can answer duct questions for customers

There were also some internal agentic use cases that can accomplish mundane and repetitive tasks, which is where much of the focus on AI agents has been since companies started to embrace the nology in earnest earlier this year

In yet another sign of Walmart’s seriousness when it comes to AI, the Wall Street Journal reports of key hires, including Daniel Danker, an executive at Instacart, who will steer global AI acceleration, duct, and design.Microsoft-OpenAI contract talks advance

Bloomberg reports this week that Microsoft is in “advanced talks” to secure an agreement that would give the giant access to OpenAI’s nology

The new terms, people familiar with the matter say, would give Microsoft use of OpenAI’s models, including if the startup achieves its goal of building a more powerful artificial general intelligence (AGI), a theoretical concept in which an AI system would have capabilities that rival those of a human

The news outlet reports that the pair have been meeting regularly and that a deal could come together within a matter of weeks

Sixty-four percent of senior leaders agreed that the fear of replacement, as opposed to augmentation with agentic AI, will stifle adoption

Yet only 24% said that employee resistance is one of the biggest barriers, as cybersecurity and data privacy concerns each ranked higher, at 35% and 30%, respectively.Courtesy of EY JOBS RADARHiring:- Northwestern Mutual is seeking a VP, chief information security officer, based in Milwaukee

Previously, he served as EVP and global CIO for fast-food giant McDonald’s and spent 17 years in various nology leadership roles at American Airlines, including as a VP of customer nology.- Fulton Bank named Kevin Gremer as chief operations and nology officer, joining the Mid-Atlantic regional bank to oversee the IT and operations teams

He also has more than 20 years of management experience at Capital One.- CIQ announced the appointment of Peter Nelson as CTO, joining the software infrastructure firm after most recently serving as VP of engineering at Apple's Claris software development subsidiary

Before that, he served as the chief duct officer at headphones and speakers manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins.- Everon appointed Ibrahim Kassem as CTO, where he will oversee the development of the company’s commercial security, fire, and sprinkler safety systems

He previously held senior leadership roles at financial services company Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) Mortgage nology and mortgage software vider Ellie Mae.- Arch Insurance moted David Maher to the role of CIO, effective immediately

In this role, Maher will lead the dery of the global insurance company’s IT strategy and infrastructure

Previously, he served as a head of engineering at Lloyds Banking Group and also held nology leadership roles at banking giants including Bank of America and Merrill Lynch.- InspereX appointed Ira Lehrman as CTO, where he will spearhead the financial nology company’s duct roadmap

Lehrman joins InspereX from digital capital marketplace Bid Global , where he served as CTO

Previously, he held senior positions at fin company Broadridge, investment manager Nuveen, and Merrill Lynch.This is the web version of CIO Intelligence, a weekly on the , trends, and news IT leaders need to know. for free.