WPP's Mark Read Latest Victim Of Deepfake's Cobweb

Mark Read, the CEO of WPP, is the most recent victim of a deepfake. Read has advised the other top leadership members of the organisation to exercise caution in this regard.

The CEO and another top WPP executive were the subjects of a Microsoft Teams conference that was allegedly set up by fraudsters using a WhatsApp account that contained a picture of the CEO that was made public.

To obtain money, the con artists used YouTube footage and an executive voice clone. They requested the details of the other meeting leaders and asked them to form a new company. Still, the endeavour was a failure.

“Fortunately the attackers were not successful. We all need to be vigilant of the techniques that go beyond emails to take advantage of virtual meetings, AI, and deepfakes. We have seen increasing sophistication in the cyber-attacks on our colleagues, and those targeted at senior leaders in particular," said Read in his email to other leadership of the company.

“Thanks to the vigilance of our people, including the executive concerned, the incident was prevented," stated a WPP spokesperson.

Given that WPP, one of the largest holding companies in the world, has made large investments in AI, this is troubling. WPP said that generative AI would revolutionise the advertising industry when it revealed last year that it was collaborating with Nvidia, the manufacturer of chips.

The creative sector has benefited greatly from the emergence of AI and the advertising sector is producing exciting new work. However, offenders are also abusing the technology to target corporate executives, celebrities and political candidates, spurring fear around.