Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Patrick Hillmann, chief communications officer at the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, claims scammers made a deepfake of him to trick contacts into taking meetings.
Writing in a blog post titled “Scammers Created an AI Hologram of Me to Scam Unsuspecting Projects,” Hillmann claims that a “sophisticated hacking team” used video footage of interviews and TV appearances to create the fake. Says Hillmann: “Other than the 15 pounds that I gained during COVID being noticeably absent, this deep fake was refined enough to fool several highly intelligent crypto community members.”
The only direct evidence Hillmann offers for the claim is a screenshot of a conversation with an anonymous individual who claims to have had a Zoom call with…