The Growing Trend of Deepfakes in Interviews

Human resources teams have adopted remote interviews due to their speed and convenience, but fraudsters have also taken advantage of this approach.

Powered by easily accessible generative-AI tools, impostors can now borrow or invent credentials, generate a convincing resume, and appear on-camera with a flawlessly lip-synced face and a cloned voice.

The threat is real and growing for HR and recruiting teams that now conduct most interviews over Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

This article explains how deepfake interview scams work, outlines specific detection techniques, and demonstrates how Pindrop^® Pulse for meetings offers real-time deepfake detection directly in your virtual interview room.

By the end, you’ll have a clearer playbook for spotting deepfake applicants before they infiltrate your organization.

How widespread are deepfakes in job interviews?

When Pindrop posted a senior engineering opening in 2024, one candidate, a coder named “Ivan X,” checked every box on paper.

But on video, our recruiter noticed the applicant’s facial expressions lagged behind his words by a fraction of a second. Further review revealed a face-swap deepfake and a voice clone driven by generative AI. Learn more about it in our full breakdown of these events in our article, From Interview to Intel Drop: The Moment We Exposed a Coordinated Hiring Scheme.

As our CEO and cofounder, Vijay Balasubramaniyan, said, “Gen AI has blurred the line between what it is to be human and what it means to be machine.” (CNBC)

Key data points from recent research paint a similar picture:

Our own 2025 Voice Intelligence & Security Report confirms the trend: Synthetic voices accounted for 0.33% of contact center calls processed in Q4 2024, representing a 173% increase from Q1.

Risks and consequences of deepfake usage in interviews

Hiring someone who is not who they appear to be is more than an HR misstep; it can create a multilayer security breach that ripples across the organization.

Data breaches and IP theft

A deepfake hire can use legitimate credentials to infiltrate internal networks, exfiltrate source code, or download sensitive customer data before security teams realize anything is wrong. Once inside the VPN or Git repository, traditional perimeter controls assume the user is trusted.

Financial fraud and wire-transfer scams

An impostor with finance or treasury permissions can instruct colleagues to release funds, approve purchase orders, or open new vendor accounts.

In February 2024, for example, scammers posed as the chief finance officer (CFO) of engineering giant Arup. Using an AI-generated video call, they convinced an employee to send $25 million to five Hong Kong bank accounts, illustrating how a single fake identity can translate into an eight-figure loss. (Financial Times)

Ransomware and access brokering

Threat actors increasingly sell “employee” access on dark-web marketplaces. Once a deepfake engineer or analyst is on payroll, they can plant backdoors or hand over MFA tokens to ransomware crews, who then detonate encryption attacks timed for maximum disruption.

Reputational damage and regulatory fines

Clients and regulators expect thorough due diligence in hiring, particularly for roles that involve handling personal data or critical infrastructure. A publicized deepfake incident signals weak internal controls and can trigger fines.

“Malicious actors are using AI-generated personas to create believable, realistic videos, pictures, audio, and text of events which never happened,” warned the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Learn more about the cost of a deepfake attack on your organization.

How deepfakes are used in interviews

Deepfake job applicant fraud typically follows a two-step playbook.

Because most early-stage interviews happen over Zoom, Teams, or a voice line, the fraudster can run the entire operation from a laptop.

Tools and techniques used by fraudsters

Face-swap applications

Consumer-grade apps let attackers overlay a realistic face onto a live webcam feed, even letting them control eye blinks and lip movement with simple keystrokes.

AI video generators and virtual cameras

Some software routes prerendered video through a virtual webcam, allowing an impostor to prerecord answers, loop them under perfect lighting, and respond to the recruiter’s audio through a separate mic.

Voice-cloning engines

With just a 30-second sample, open-source models can replicate tone, accent, pacing, and filler-word habits, which fraudsters can then use to mask their real voice in real time.

Prompt-based coaching

Large language models feed the impostor live text prompts, such as technical answers, follow-up questions, or icebreaker jokes, so the deepfake sounds credible even outside their genuine expertise.

These off-the-shelf tools can now be obtained at a low cost, meaning virtually anyone can launch a deepfake interview scheme without specialized skills.

How to respond to deepfakes in interviews

Once a potential deepfake is suspected, HR teams need both immediate countermeasures and long-term process changes. Two pillars, technology and training, work together to keep impostors out of the hiring pipeline.

By combining robust, AI-powered detection tools with well-trained recruiters, organizations can quickly spot and block deepfake applicants before they reach IT systems or customer data.

The Pindrop solution’s layered approach delivers those safeguards without adding friction to genuine candidates, keeping the hiring experience smooth while maintaining enterprise-grade security.

Detection strategies and technologies

Multifactor authentication at the point of scheduling

Require candidates to verify a mobile number or a trusted email address — or even a passive voice analysis check via Pindrop^® Passport — then proceed to photo-ID validation linked to the live interview slot.

Real-time behavioral and signal analysis

Integrate solutions that can flag anomalies like micro-latency between audio and lip movement, unexpected pitch plateaus, or codec artefacts that don’t appear in genuine webcams into videoconferencing APIs.

Training and awareness for recruiters

Build a deepfake playbook

Outline step-by-step checks, like initial MFA, spontaneous video challenges, voice validation, and required escalation paths, and make it a part of every interview briefing.

Run live simulations

Perform quarterly drills to let HR staff experience convincing fakes in a safe setting to reinforce what cues were missed and which defences worked.

Cross-check digital footprints

Encourage recruiters to verify LinkedIn employment dates, GitHub commits, or conference-talk videos.

Verify identity documents in a second channel

Ask candidates to upload high-resolution IDs through a secure portal.

Pindrop^® Pulse for meetings: Real-time audio and video deepfake detection

To stay ahead of these trends, Pindrop has extended its deepfake-detection engine, already trusted to analyze 130 million phone calls in 2024 alone, into video conferencing.

Pindrop^® Pulse for Meetings integrates directly into Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Webex sessions, with more platforms on the roadmap. Built on the same multifactor “real human” platform that powers Pulse in the contact-center world, the meeting solution:

From first-round screenings to executive panels, Pindrop^® Pulse helps protect the hiring process without slowing it down.

Ready to see it in action? Discover how Pindrop^® Pulse integrates with your meeting software and start keeping deepfakes out of your interview pipeline.

Check out Pindrop^® Pulse for meetings.