The ITU recommended urgent adoption of detection standards and provenance tools to label synthetic audio/video, warning deepfakes are increasingly used in investment, romance and giveaway scams and could threaten elections and markets. The report, publicized Dec 30, 2025 at the AI for Good Summit, calls for platform verification and international cooperation.

The International Telecommunication Union’s report, publicized alongside UN coverage Dec 30, 2025, warns that rapidly advancing AI synthesis tools are enabling realistic audio and video deepfakes that pose mounting fraud and security risks. The ITU recommends urgent adoption of interoperable technical standards, content authentication protocols, and platform‑level verification and provenance measures to detect and label synthetic media. Authors highlight growing use of deepfakes in investment and romance scams—where fabricated videos or voices manipulate victims into sending funds—and in giveaway and extortion schemes; they also flag potential systemic risks to elections and financial markets if synthetic content is weaponized at scale. The report urges governments, industry, and international organizations to establish shared toolkits for provenance metadata, detection APIs, and rapid takedown processes, while balancing free expression and privacy concerns. It calls on major platforms to deploy verifiable credentials and on states to support capacity building so lower‑resourced countries can defend against cross‑border deepfake abuse.