Zerodha CEO NithinKamath on Wednesday expressed concerns regarding the growing threat posed by AI technology and deepfakes to the financial services industry in a recent video shared on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram.
However, the video clip, at the end, took a shocking turn when Kamath revealed that the person in the video was not him but a deepfake.
In the viral video clip, the Zerodha CEO talks about the difficulty in verifying customer identities while onboarding a new customer amid increasing digitisation.
Expressing concerns regarding the growing sophistication of deepfakes, Kamath says while opening an account the normal procedure is to fetch the ID or address proof data from the source using Digilocker or Aadhaar. Also, the face from the ID proof is matched through a webcam.
Kamath further says the growing sophistication of deepfakes is posing challenges in distinguishing between real individuals and AI-generated replicas during account openings.
“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 talks about the future regulatory developments over the issue.
“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.”
At the end of the video clip, Kamath surprises the netizens by saying, “And in this video it isn’t me; it is my deep fake AI avatar.”
Netizens react
“The last bit was a jaw dropping moment,” wrote a user on X
“The last line was the killing note,” another user wrote.
“The moment he said “In this video it isn’t me it’s my deepfake avatar” I got stunned” another user reacted.