Police authorities in the city of Baotou, Inner Mongolia, reported in May that a man was stolen the equivalent of 622,000 US dollars with the help of deepfake technology. A hacker had tricked him with a deceptively real AI clone of a friend who told him in a video call that he urgently needed money. This was not the naive victim of a grandparent scam. The victim is a senior executive at a tech company in Fuzhou. And yet, his fake friend’s lifelike body language and voice fooled him enough that he instantly pulled out his wallet.