Fake job seekers using AI reportedly flooding job market
Pindrop Security, an Atlanta-based voice authentication startup, recently posted a job for a coder. One applicant, according to the report, stood out from others. The candidate, a Russian coder named Ivan, seemed to have all the right qualifications for the role.
However, when interviewed over video, the Pindrop recruiter noticed that Ivan's facial expressions were out of sync with his words. The candidate, according to Pindrop CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan, was a scammer using deepfake software and generative AI in a bid to get hired.
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'Gen AI has blurred the line between what it is to be human and what it means to be machine,' Balasubramaniyan told CNBC. 'What we're seeing is that individuals are using these fake identities and fake faces and fake voices to secure employment, even sometimes going so far as doing a face swap with another individual who shows up for the job.'
Why, you might ask, would someone want to use AI to get hired for a job they aren't really qualified for? According to CNBC, once hired, imposters can install malware or demand ransom from a company, or steal its customer data, trade secrets, or funds.
In some cases, deceitful employees use the AI tools to get hired and collect a salary they wouldn't otherwise be able to, according to Balasubramaniyan.
In another incident, posted to LinkedIn, a recruiter discovered that a candidate was using deepfake technology to appear as someone they weren't in the midst of an interview. The recruiter abruptly ended the video call.
According to research and advisory firm Gartner, one in four job candidates will be fake by 2028. Cybersecurity and cryptocurrency firms in particular, have seen a surge in AI-powered fake job seekers, industry experts told CNBS.
Companies that hire for remote roles are particularly vulnerable to being targeted by these bad actors.
'Every time we list a job posting, we get 100 North Korean spies applying to it,' said Lili Infante, founder of CAT Labs, a startup that works in cybersecurity and cryptocurrency. 'When you look at their resumes, they look amazing; they use all the keywords for what we're looking for.'
One of the easiest ways to weed out these sorts of bad actors is to hold job interviews in-person, even for remote positions.
'I'd bet that in-person interviews make a comeback in 2025, even for remote companies,' said Amit Matani, CEO of recruitment firm Wellfound, in a post on LinkedIn.
Pindrop, according to CNBC, also used a video authentication program to confirm that 'Ivan' was a fake.
Some deepfake candidates that actually get hired do a bad job. But ironically, others actually do the job so well, that employers are sorry to let them go when they're found out, according to Roger Grimes, a computer security consultant who spoke to CNBC.
The rise of artificial intelligence has led to numerous concerns about workers being replaced by AI. Now it seems like candidates may even have to compete with the technology on the job market.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Besides the Lincoln Center theater, Tow, once a member of the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, funded a performing arts center at Brooklyn College (where he and his wife, both raised poor, had met); journalism programs at Columbia University and City University of New York; the Tow Center for Developmental Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan; and the Tow Youth Justice Institute in West Haven, Connecticut. Advertisement After an early career teaching economics at Hunter and Brooklyn colleges, Tow concluded that universities had 'too many people fighting over anthills,' and he jumped to the private sector. In 1964, he landed a job at the TelePrompTer Corp., a pioneer in the cable industry, where he was credited with expanding subscribers to 1 million from 50,000. Advertisement In 1973, he and his wife, who had been an elementary-school teacher, started their own cable business, Century Communications Corp. It was launched from their dining room table on a line of credit. The timing was perfect: The federal government had just deregulated the industry, and homes with cable subscriptions began to grow exponentially. New-Canaan-based Century became one of the country's largest cable providers, with some 2,300 employees and 1.6 million subscribers. In 1999, Tow, the chief executive, sold the company for $5.2 billion, in a mostly stock deal, to Adelphia Communications. He became Adelphia's largest shareholder after the founders, the Rigas family of Pennsylvania. Three years later, Adelphia filed for bankruptcy amid a corruption scandal that eventually sent John Rigas, the founder, and his son Timothy, the company's former chief financial officer, to prison. Tow's shares had declined by 70 percent. He had also jumped into the telephone business, buying a stake in 1989 in Citizens Utilities Co. of Stamford, Connecticut, a network of small phone companies that is now known as Frontier Communications. The New York Times called Tow, who as Citizens' chief executive grew the company, 'an aggressive acquisitor and deal maker.' But when it was disclosed that he was paid $21.6 million in 1992, more than any other utility executive in the country, shareholders, including the California Public Employees' Retirement Fund, sued. The lawsuits were eventually settled. Tow retired from business in 2004 to focus on philanthropy through the Tow Foundation. Advertisement In 2012, he and his wife signed the Giving Pledge led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to have the world's richest people promise to contribute at least 50 percent of their wealth to nonprofits. The Tows committed to give away nearly 100 percent of their assets. The Tow Foundation reported $321 million in assets in 2024, a sum that will grow considerably with the addition of bequests from Tow following his death, according to his family. Leonard Tow was born on May 30, 1928, in Brooklyn to Louis and Estelle (Weiss) Tow, Jewish immigrants from Russia whose family name derived from the Hebrew word for 'good.' Leonard and a brother grew up in a one-room apartment behind Tow's Discount House, a store his parents owned in the Bensonhurst neighborhood. He received a bachelor's degree in 1950 from Brooklyn College, where he met Claire Schneider, a member of the class of 1952. He belonged to the Longfellows Club, a group for male students over 6 feet in height, and she was in the Hi Hites, an equivalent group for tall female students. They married in 1952. Tow earned a master's in 1952 and a doctorate in economic geography in 1960, both from Columbia University. Survivors include his sons Andrew and Frank; a daughter, Emily; eight grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. The Tows funded the Leonard & Claire Tow Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia and the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at City University of New York. The two journalism ventures aim to find ways for journalism to survive in the internet age and combat misinformation. 'I'm really worried about the print-journalism side of the business,' Tow told the Times in announcing the first grants of $8 million to the journalism programs in 2008. 'There's so much contraction of employment going on; every day you pick up the paper and this chain or that chain has laid off another 10 percent, and we're watching advertising support slowly disintegrate.' Advertisement In 2016, the Tow Foundation donated $25 million to Barnard College to help build a new teaching center. 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