The news media coverage of organisational deepfake risks

In recent times, extensive advancements in artificial intelligence have brought about influential developments. One of these developments includes deepfakes, a by-product of artificial intelligence applications that manipulate images and videos to develop authentic-looking fake videos. While deepfake do offer benefits, concerns about their consequences have gained significant attention within the mainstream news media. Existing academic literature analysing deepfake coverage within the news media predominantly discusses the individual and societal level while neglecting the organisational level. This leaves a significant research gap that this study seeks to investigate. Given the threats that deepfakes pose on the organisational level, it is crucial to examine the deepfake threat for organisations. However, existing studies found that when analysing deepfakes, it is essential to investigate the phenomena on the individual, organisational, and societal risks level. Hence despite this study’s focus on the organisational level, it will also explore the individual and societal levels to provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic. As such, this study will examine the following research question: How does the Financial Times address the risks of deepfakes for companies? To answer the research question, a qualitative approach was employed, using thematic analysis as a method of data analysis. The data collection process collected and analysed 55 articles from the Financial Times. From the analysis, a total of three main themes were derived. Firstly, the manipulation themes explore the Financial Times’s discussion on how deepfakes are used to exploit people and information. The second theme, security risks, discusses the possible risks and vulnerabilities deepfake poses to organisations, individuals, and society. The last theme is the regulation theme which provides insights into the actions and policy measures discussed within the Financial Times articles that could mitigate the risks associated with deepfakes. These themes indicate discrepancies in the reporting of the Financial Times's coverage of the deepfake risk levels. While the coverage addresses all levels to an extent, the societal level receives more coverage than the individual and organisational levels. When discussing the organisational level, the coverage predominantly focuses on financial and reputational risks. Additionally, the Financial Times also addresses the deepfake risk for companies as an opportunity for profitability by implementing safety measures against deepfake threats. Overall, the findings of this study had similar results to the existing academic research on the deepfake phenomena and news media and provided further insights into this phenomenon. This paper concludes with this research’s theoretical and societal implications, as well as its limitations and possible suggestions for future research.