Resemble AI Chief Executive Zohaib Ahmed warns that synthetic identity fraud now eclipses traditional deepfakes as a digital threat, with artificial intelligence (AI) tools enabling full persona fabrication in under an hour by anyone with basic technical skills.
Speaking exclusively to NewsGhana, Ahmed said the threat has shifted from manipulated content to what he describes as the trust infrastructure underneath, where attackers can now manufacture a convincing human identity complete with a face, voice, professional history and social media presence.
Ghana has already felt the impact. Ahmed cited recent deepfake incidents involving President John Dramani Mahama and footballer Thomas Partey as examples of synthetic content gaining traction before it could be identified and debunked, a pattern he says is accelerating globally.
He said the barrier to creating fake identities has effectively collapsed. A non-technical person can now generate a headshot, clone a voice from a few seconds of audio and build out full social profiles in a single session, making persona fabrication more accessible than ever before.
“Fabricating an identity has become easier than proving a real one,” Ahmed told NewsGhana.
He identified media, financial services, telecommunications, recruiting and government as the sectors most exposed, arguing that any environment where face-to-face interaction has been replaced by digital verification presents a clear opening for bad actors.
Ahmed said most existing identity systems were built to verify whether information presented is correct, not whether the person presenting it actually exists. With AI now capable of fabricating all verification signals simultaneously and making them internally consistent, those systems are increasingly inadequate.
On the regulatory front, he pointed to the European Union (EU) AI Act and the United States TAKE IT DOWN Act as concrete examples of governments moving from policy discussion to enforcement. He warned that organisations not monitoring these developments risk being caught unprepared.
Looking ahead, Ahmed argued that AI capability and digital trust safeguards must evolve in parallel, adding that the organisations best positioned for the future will not be those producing the most content but those best able to prove what is real.
