When Authenticity Can No Longer Be Assumed: AI Impersonation, Deepfakes, and the Future of Digital Trust
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Scott Stornetta, CEO, SureMark Digital
When Authenticity Can No Longer Be Assumed
Recent warnings from the Federal Bureau of Investigation describe a growing wave of AI-enabled impersonation attacks targeting senior U.S. officials. These attacks are no longer crude scams. They rely on AI-generated voice and text that sound authentic, reference real relationships, and unfold in ways that feel entirely legitimate.
This escalation may feel sudden. From a technical perspective, it is not.
What we are seeing is the failure of a long-standing assumption: that authenticity can be inferred from how something sounds, looks, or feels. That assumption no longer holds.
AI Has Turned Familiarity Into a Vulnerability
Generative AI did not invent deception. It made deception scalable.
For decades, digital trust relied on informal cues such as a familiar voice, a recognizable writing style, or a known contact. These signals worked because impersonation was difficult and expensive. AI has removed that constraint.
A convincing voice can now be synthesized from seconds of public audio. Writing styles can be reconstructed from publicly available material. Public figures, precisely because they are visible, are easier to impersonate rather than harder.
In this environment, familiarity no longer protects us. It exposes us.
Impersonation Is Now A Network-Level Threat
The most dangerous impersonation attacks are not isolated events. They spread.
This pattern was evident in a July 2025 incident in which an AI-generated voice impersonating Marco Rubio contacted foreign ministers and senior U.S. officials through encrypted messaging platforms. The attempt failed, but only after convincing interactions delayed detection.
Once authenticity is assumed, response always lags deception. This is not a training failure. It is a system failure. You can read more on my POV with that incident in an earlier post warning “Don’t Get Rubio’d.”
Authenticity Must Be Provable, Not Assumed
In a world where convincing impersonation is cheap and widely available, authenticity cannot rely on voice, appearance, or context alone. It must be independently verifiable.
That requires systems that provide:
Cryptographic proof of origin
Tamper-evident records of identity assertions
Verification that does not depend on trust in platforms or intermediaries
Authenticity must become a property of the system itself, not something inferred by the recipient.
What Verifiable Trust Looks Like In Practice
These principles are no longer theoretical. They are being tested in real-world environments.
One example is a recently launched initiative by the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund, which has partnered with SureMark Digital to pilot a method for independently verifying official communications.
As part of this pilot, executive-level communications from Rosemarie McClean, Chief Executive, and Dino Cataldo Dell’Accio, Deputy Chief Executive, are digitally signed using verified credentials. Members of the public can independently confirm the authenticity and integrity of these messages using a browser-based verification tool, without relying on trust in a platform, account, or intermediary.
The goal is simple: allow recipients to independently answer whether a message is authentic and unaltered.
As Dell’Accio noted when the pilot was announced, cryptographic verification represents a critical step in countering AI-driven deepfakes, impersonation, and misinformation that increasingly threaten digital communications.
The Stakes are Institutional, Not Just Individual
Governments, enterprises, and international organizations rely on trusted communications to operate. When authenticity becomes uncertain, coordination slows, decisions are delayed, and credibility erodes.
AI impersonation does not merely enable fraud. It undermines the assumptions that digital communication depends on.
Addressing this challenge requires moving beyond awareness campaigns and reactive controls toward infrastructure that makes trust verifiable by design.
How SureMark Solves The Trust Problem
If your organization depends on trusted digital communications, now is the time to evaluate how authenticity is established and verified.
SureMark Digital works with public institutions, enterprises, and leadership teams to implement cryptographically verifiable credentials that protect against impersonation and misinformation.
To learn how verifiable digital trust can be applied to your communications, contact SureMark Digital to start the conversation.
