Scammers reportedly using AI deepfakes to get hired in organisations
As if finding the right candidate for a job wasn't hard enough, now hiring managers need to ensure candidates are even real.
AI generated deep fake applicants are on the rise with research and advisory firm Gartner warning earlier this year one in four job candidates globally will be fake by 2028.
"Generative AI (GenAI) are making deepfakes increasingly sophisticated and adaptable as advanced attackers can now mimic facial expressions, blinking patterns and even subtle micromovements with uncanny accuracy, confounding even the most advanced detection algorithms," the company's research warned.
In April, the co-founder of a cybersecurity firm shared his experience of a recent job interview where he suspected the applicant was using artificial intelligence to alter his appearance.
Dawid Moczadlo, co-founder of Vidoc Security, uploaded a recording of the job interview to LinkedIn after he immediately noticed the interviewee's "weird" avatar.
"Are you using something to change your camera view?" Moczadlo asked the interviewee in the video. "I can see that you're using some kind of software."
He asked the candidate to raise his hands and put them in front of his face to cover it partially. When the candidate didn't do so, Moczadlo ended the call.
"This is so messed up," the Vidoc co-founder would later say on LinkedIn. "This happened to me second time in two months."
According to the CEO, the candidate was using AI to alter his appearance during a technical interview. He was also using ChatGPT to answer his questions.
"I could smell the GPT-4 bullet point-style responses," he said.
Moczadlo told CBS News that he was shocked when he realised what was happening.
"I felt a little bit violated, because we are the security experts," he said to the news outlet.
Moczadlo issued a warning to organisations following his experience with AI job candidates.
"Either you change the hiring process now, or you'll learn the hard way," he said on a separate LinkedIn post. "It's creepy and sad, but we have to adapt; there's no other option. You need to act now!"
Vidoc's incident comes amid the growing use of AI among jobseekers to find work, a trend being exploited by scammers.
Ben Sesser, the CEO of BrightHire, told CNBC that fraudulent job candidates using AI have "ramped up massively" in 2025.
"Humans are generally the weak link in cybersecurity, and the hiring process is an inherently human process with a lot of hand-offs and a lot of different people involved," Sesser told CNBC. "It's become a weak point that folks are trying to expose."
Pindrop Security, an information security company, also shared that they had a candidate using deepfake software and other generative AI tools to get hired at their company.
"What we're seeing is that individuals are using these fake identities and fake faces and fake voices to secure employment, even sometimes going so far as doing a face swap with another individual who shows up for the job," Vijay Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop CEO and co-founder, said to CNBC.
Balasubramaniyan said employers mistakenly hiring fake jobseekers can introduce risks to their company, as the impostor can install malware to demand ransom, as well as steal customer data, trade secrets, or funds.
