2025 is the Year We Lost the Default to Truth

Deepfakes have finally reached ubiquity to the point where "seeing is believing" is no longer a proverb, but a liability.

This is not because I or anyone else in the deepfake detection industry forewarned the world that malicious synthetic media would eventually worm its way into our daily feeds, our bank accounts, and our ballot boxes. Rather, it is because 2025 was the year the theoretical became tangible. The threats are no longer looming on the horizon, but here, ever-present, and unfortunately, they are becoming expected.

While the headlines of 2025 were often grim, they also served as the wake-up call the world desperately needed to turn the tide against weaponization that defined our new reality in 2025.

The Erosion of Political Identity

We have often discussed the potential for AI to socially engineer high-ranking officials. This year, we watched it happen in real time. We live in a world where the highest officials in our government can be impersonated amongst their peers, and the consequences have been chilling.

The most stark example arrived this summer when an AI impostor successfully mimicked Secretary of State Marco Rubio's voice to contact foreign ministers and U.S. officials via Signal. (Such a thing is to be expected when verification protocols lag behind generative capabilities.) This wasn't just espionage, but chaos. From bizarre AI videos of Donald Trump and Elon Musk playing on government screens to racist deepfakes of leaders circulating online, the political sphere became a playground for synthetic disinformation.

The Generative Leap (and the "Bunny" Problem)

AI innovations do not solely exist in the realm of those creating tools that themselves create things; they also exist to fool humans into believing they are real.

2025 saw the release of GPT-5, which OpenAI launched in August with significantly reduced hallucination rates. But we also saw the darker side of rapid advancement. Sora 2 arrived with incredible fidelity, yet it immediately faced backlash for continuing to use copyrighted work by default.

You no longer need to be a state actor to fool the world anymore. A simple, 8-second video of bunnies on a trampoline went viral, racking up 210 million views before anyone realized it was entirely synthetic. If 200 million people can't spot a fake rabbit, we have a massive "everyone problem" on our hands.

Financial Devastation at Scale

The ease and cost of access to these tools meant that scammers didn't just knock on the door; they kicked it down. The crypto sector was hit hardest, with deepfake scams surging 456% year-over-year. We watched as the founder of THORChain lost $1.35 million in a single deepfake Zoom call.

Yet it wasn't all crypto. Traditional finance faced a siege of "vishing" (voice phishing) attacks, which surged 170% in Q2. Attackers are now cloning voices from just minutes of social media audio to bypass bank authentication, proving that the "own goal" of coughing up information is easier than ever to force.

The Human Cost

I am constantly asked about the future of AI, but the present is already exacting a heavy toll on our humanity.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking story of the year came from Character.AI, which banned children from its platform after a rash of teen suicides linked to chatbot interactions. It was a tragic reminder that these tools can manipulate not just our wallets, but our emotional wellbeing.

Meanwhile, public figures faced a relentless assault on their likeness. Taylor Swift faced backlash over AI-generated promo videos, and Google's Veo 3 was manipulated to flood TikTok with racist content.

A Path Forward

Despite the grim headlines, 2025 was also the year we stopped simply watching and started acting. California finally passed SB 53, signing AI transparency into law — a first and flawed but major step in the right direction in combatting deepfakes. And at Reality Defender, we realized that to truly turn the tide, we needed to democratize defense. That is why we launched our public API this summer — to ensure that deepfake detection is not just a luxury for the Fortune 500, but a standard utility for everyone.

2026 is less than a month away. Given the pace of AI development, many things can and will happen before the ball drops. Yet I am confident that while the deepfake problem will persist, our collective ability to fight it has never been stronger.