Frank McKenna

Every night in March of this year, a man who called himself the “night officer” watched a college professor sleep. It was not in person, but rather on a Microsoft Teams video call. He was making sure she did not escape from her home and monitoring her every move. His feed came from the college professor’s phone, which was propped up next to her bed. On her phone, she could see the officer, too, with the New Delhi Police logo behind him. The officer could see her when she woke up.

I was browsing Telegram, and a wild recruiting advertisement caught my eye. The job is called “Face Motion Video Project,” and it offers recruits $7 for a few minutes of work. But that work involves uploading selfie videos of themselves, and it’s highly unclear what those videos could be used for. I suspect fraud. The instructions for the gig were the first sign of something super sketchy. Sit in front of your laptop or phone.

Some of the people found out that they had been robbed of their identities when a detective showed them a short video of their own face. On the screen, they were smiling, blinking, and turning their heads, but the clips they watched were not real. Israeli investigators say the videos were generated using artificial intelligence and were good enough to fool the banks that relied on them.