Monday (June 27th): Deep fake phone calls from Ukraine!

Franziska Giffey  - deep fake
Franziska Giffey

Name? Franziska Giffey

Westphalian identity? German

Age? 44

Why is she in the news? Franziska Giffey, Mayor of Berlin (Germany), had a call with her counterpart from Kiev (Ukraine) Vitali Klitschko last week. Usually not newsworthy, however, during times of war this seems more likely. Especially given that Berlin serves as a distribution gate towards the rest of Europe for Ukrainian refugees. But a call between two mayors from two different countries is hardly IR content …

Why do we care? Well, we care because Giffey did not actually have a call with Klitschko, she talked for 15 minutes until she slowly realised that the questions her conversation partner asked did not really sound like something the mayor of Kiev would say. Once he asked about Ukrainian refugees draining social security systems in Germany, Giffey ended the call and slowly realised she had fallen for a deep fake phone call. To make matters worse, this did not only happen to Giffey, but also to the mayors of Budapest, Madrid and Vienna. 

Why should you care? Because deep fake technology is something to at least keep an eye on. So far the software has been used to make very realistic videos of famous people’s faces merged onto the bodies of porn stars. Now, it is slowly becoming more accessible and now also used for deception in war. You should care 8/10.

Who else cares? Ukrainian President Zelensky as he was a victim of a deep fake as well a few months ago when a video appeared of him surrendering to Russia. 

Any further comments? What should make one worry is that when approached through a non-official email domain, the offices of four European mayors did not grow suspicious. Especially the Vienna mayor and Giffey should have realised something was wrong when Klitschko did not speak in German to them, despite the fact that he speaks perfect German and boxed in Germany for two decades.

Joshua Dario Hasenstab

General Coordinator