When a Video Isn’t Real: Georgia Tech Alum Innovates Deepfake Detection for a New Era of Fraud

In 2024, a finance worker in Hong Kong was duped into attending a meeting with four co-workers – or so he thought. What he didn’t know was that all four were scammers, using deep-fake video to deceive him. In the end, he wired them $25 million.

“We used to get about one deepfake a month at the beginning of 2023,” said Vijay Balasubramaniyan (PhD CS 2011), CEO and co-founder of Pindrop Security. “Now we’re seeing seven deep-fake attacks per customer every day.”

Balasubramaniyan founded his business in 2011, based on research he did as a Ph.D. student with his advisor, Mustaque Ahamad. Initially, the focus was on detecting deception in voice calls, with banks being the primary customers.