By Zarak Atif
This blog is part of Gate 15’s blog series “Riding the Tiger: AI Threats and Opportunities”, highlighting the essential considerations for organizational leaders and security professionals. Every week, we’ll be sharing insights, best practices, and actionable strategies to help your organization responsibly leverage AI while safeguarding data, operations, and reputation. Each post in the series will examine a different aspect of AI adoption, threat mitigation, and resilience, while providing actionable insights to help organizations navigate evolving AI risks and harness the technology effectively.
Introduction
Misinformation, disinformation, and deepfakes are not new threats. What has changed is how easily AI can now create realistic synthetic content, tailor messages to specific audiences, and spread misleading narratives across digital platforms with both speed and scale. A false claim, a fake image, a synthetic voice message, or a manipulated video no longer requires a sophisticated production team. In many cases, it only requires access to widely available AI tools. For organizations, governments, and communities, this creates a direct challenge to trust. It affects confidence in leadership, official communications, and the information people rely on during uncertain or fast-moving situations.
Deepfakes and Social Engineering
AI-generated voice and video deepfakes are becoming more relevant in fraud schemes, executive impersonation, and social engineering attacks. Business email compromise has long relied on urgency, authority, and trust. Synthetic audio and video make those tactics even more persuasive by adding a familiar voice, face, tone, or communication style.
A threat actor could use a synthetic voice message to request an urgent wire transfer, pressure an employee to bypass approval procedures, or impersonate a senior leader during a developing situation. In a video setting, a deepfake may only need to appear legitimate long enough to influence a decision, especially when people are under pressure.
The risk is not limited to financial fraud. Deepfakes can also damage reputations, create internal confusion, and weaken confidence in leadership or institutions. A fabricated video of an executive, government official, public safety leader, or sector representative making a false statement can spread quickly, often before an organization has time to verify what happened and respond
AI-Enhanced Disinformation
AI-generated content can also accelerate misinformation during crises, making response efforts more difficult and damaging trust along the way. In emergencies, people naturally look for fast answers from trusted sources. Threat actors can exploit that need by creating impersonated accounts and flooding information channels with false updates, fake screenshots, manipulated images, fabricated statements, or synthetic videos.
A single false narrative can quickly become many different forms of content: social media posts, fake news-style articles, images, comments, direct messages, short-form videos, and automated replies. By the time official communications catch up, the false narrative may have already shaped public perception.
For organizations and governments, this creates a difficult reality. Even when false content is corrected, the damage may already be done. Stakeholders may hesitate to trust future communications, employees may question internal instructions, and communities may become less confident in official response efforts.
Manipulating Public Perception
AI-enabled misinformation does not have to be perfectly convincing to be effective. Often, its purpose is simply to create enough doubt, confusion, or emotional reaction to influence behavior.
Threat actors may try to discredit executives or public officials, create panic during emergencies, reduce confidence in official communications, exploit existing social divisions, undermine trust in critical infrastructure operators, influence customers or investors, or distract from other malicious activity such as cyber intrusions or fraud.
That is why misinformation and deepfakes should be viewed as resilience issues. They affect how people make decisions, whether they follow instructions, whether they trust emergency alerts, and whether they believe an organization or government is capable of managing a crisis.
For community resilience, trust is a critical asset. Once trust is weakened, response and recovery become more difficult.
Governance and Institutional Trust
Resilience in the AI era requires cross-functional governance. Responding to AI-enabled misinformation cannot fall to one team alone. Communications teams may lead public messaging, cybersecurity teams may detect impersonation attempts, legal teams may manage liability, and business continuity teams may coordinate operational response. Government affairs, public safety, and emergency management teams may also play important roles when false narratives affect public confidence or community resilience.
The deeper challenge is institutional trust. A convincing deepfake, coordinated disinformation campaign, or manipulated narrative can blur the line between what is authentic and what is artificial. When people cannot easily determine what is real, they may begin to doubt everything, including legitimate warnings, official statements, and verified evidence.
That creates a dangerous environment for organizations and governments alike. Trust, once damaged, is difficult to restore. It has to be built through consistency, transparency, preparation, and credibility long before a crisis occurs.
Conclusion
Misinformation and deepfakes are AI’s unwelcome companions. They show how powerful technologies can support productivity and innovation while also distorting reality, manipulating decisions, and weakening confidence in institutions.
For organizations, the larger issue is operational trust: trust in leadership, official communications, emergency instructions, financial approvals, digital identities, and the information people use to make decisions.
As AI tools, synthetic media, agent ecosystems, and shared prompt environments become more embedded in daily operations, threat actors will continue to exploit perception, urgency, and uncertainty. The organizations and governments best positioned to withstand this threat will be the ones that treat trust as a critical asset, not an assumption.
Additional Reading
FBI IC3: “Criminals Use Generative Artificial Intelligence to Facilitate Financial Fraud”
FBI IC3: “Senior US Officials Impersonated in Malicious Messaging Campaign”
Gate 15 works across Critical Infrastructure sectors to help organizations protect their people, places, data, and dollars. The threat environment is constantly shifting, and we are here to boost your resilience with plans, exercises, threat analysis, and operational support against both emerging and enduring threats. Contact our team at Gate15@gate15.global to see how we can assist you in delivering on your mission. Join Gate 15’s Resilience and Intelligence Portal (the GRIP)! Sign up today to stay informed of what’s new in all-hazards homeland security and join us in securing America’s people, places, data, and dollars.
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