Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath highlighted the growing threat posed by AI technology and deepfakes to the financial services industry in a recent video shared on X and Instagram. However, there is a twist in the tale. The clip, at its climax, took a shocking turn when Kamath disclosed that the person in the video was not him but a remarkably convincing deepfake.
In the minute-long clip, Kamath highlights the difficulty in verifying customer identities amid increasing digitization and expressed concerns about the growing sophistication of deepfakes, posing challenges in distinguishing between real individuals and AI-generated replicas during account openings.
He continues speaking on the topic till we reach the last few seconds and the last line of the video: “And in this video it isn’t me; it is my deep fake AI avatar.”
The likeness of the stock broker firm’s boss was eerily similar to his deepfake and without him mentioning that it is indeed AI generated, many people may not have been able to figure it out.
“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,” Kamath says in the clip.
Kamath also speculated on the future regulatory developments surrounding this issue, emphasizing the potential dilemma faced by the industry. Reverting to traditional, physical methods of opening accounts, he noted, could halt the growth of the entire sector.
“It will be interesting to see how the regulations around this evolve. Going back to the physical way of opening accounts will bring the growth of the entire sector to an abrupt stop.”
And then he dropped the bombshell to the internet’s surprise. Many users, in comments under his X post, likely didn’t even realise that it was in fact not Kamath speaking but a deepfake.
But some figured it out or where stunned at his last line.
“The last line was the killing note,” one user wrote. “The last bit was a jaw dropping moment,” wrote another.
A third user said that he figured it wasn’t Kamath. “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),” they wrote.
“It seemed so deepfake, otherwise u are a smiley person and that wasn’t there throughout video,” another comment read.
Kamath has several times spread awareness on deepfakes and how they can be misused and the consequences can be grave.