Zerodha founder shares his 58-second deepfake video, raising concern

The founder of Zerodha raised serious concerns over the growing threat of generative AI and deepfake videos. He shared a 58-second deepfake video raising his concern

The co-founder and CEO of Zerodha also raised concerns over the growing threat of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology and deepfakes to the financial service industry. In a video shared on X, he talked about the difficulty being faced to verify customer identities as digitalisation has become common nowadays. 

The Zerodha co-founder shared his 58-second clip on X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram. He shared his thoughts on how hard it is to understand if the person on the screen is real or AI-generated. 

The video looks normal until Nikhil himself in the video discloses at the end that, "It isn't me; it is my deep fake AI avatar."

The video begins with a discussion of the deepfakes video, where Nikhil in the video says, "But as the deepfakes improve, I think it will only become harder over time to validate if the person on the other side is real or AI-generated. This problem will be bigger for banks that have more stringent regulatory requirements during onboarding."

He also mentioned in the video how regulation around all this is going to evolve and how going back to the physical way can put the growth of the entire sector to an abrupt stop.

Watch the video here:

Some of his followers were surprised with the video, and they shared their thoughts in the comment section.

One of the users who didn't realise that it wasn't a deefake video said, ''The last bit was a jaw-dropping moment.'' While another mentioned that “The last line was the killing note.'' Some users mentioned that deepfake videos present unique challenges.

On the other end, some of the users figured out that there was something wrong with the video. One such user mentioned that, “It seemed so deepfake, otherwise u are a smiley person and that wasn't there throughout the video."

One of the users shared their words in an analysing way and mentioned that ''Yeah, figured it wasn't you. Lip sync, expressions, eyes, no laughter, no fumbling, and no pauses (had watched your and your wife's interview last night.”

What are deepfake videos?

Deepfake is a kind of synthetic video using artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate visual and audio content, mostly with a wrong motive to appear genuine. 

This has emerged as a threat to public trust and truth. This technology can create video and audio doing things they have never done to manipulate public perception, share misinformation and tarnish reputation.