Will AI-based Fake ID Makers Ruin Us?

Cybersecurity experts are sounding the alarm over an AI-based fake ID maker whose product is so convincing that it’s tricking identity verification processes.

• OnlyFake employs neural networks (AI) to make counterfeit documents for as little as $15.
• 404 Media passed the verification methods on OKX, a major cryptocurrency exchange, with AI-generated fake IDs.

OnlyFake, an underground website, concerns cybersecurity experts because of its ability to churn out hyper-realistic fake IDs using AI.

OnlyFake employs neural networks (AI) to make counterfeit documents for as little as $15. Traditionally, forging such documents takes a lot of time, extensive skill, and a lot more money. You are in and out in minutes.

404 Media published an investigative report that confirmed the effectiveness of the fake ID maker. They passed identity verification methods with flying colors, including that of OKX, a major cryptocurrency exchange. The service’s owner, who’s only known as John Wick, confirmed to 404 Media that the AI can manufacture hundreds of documents simultaneously from an Excel sheet.

This capability puts a wrench in our plans for enhanced security methods as we sink deeper into the age of AI. We were literally banking on ID verifications to keep our information secure in financial institutions.

If someone can weasel their way past security processes, they can defraud banks and launder money. This could very well be an infinite-money hack, which will ruin the global economy. Yes, worse than it already is, believe it or not.

Taking a picture of your ID or passport as an identity verification method is no longer sufficient. We need better and more sophisticated methods that are AI-tampering proof. Heck, they should make it quantum-computing-tempering proof while they are at it.

Financial institutions across the board, crypto or traditional, are sounding the alarm. Coin Center’s Director of Research, Peter Van Valkenburgh took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to suggest exploring security through blockchain and decentralized technologies as potential remedies to mitigate these risks.

Following this report, the OnlyFake website went offline. Whether OnlyFake will re-emerge at a later date is unclear, but someone else could still take that idea and run with it. The company posted on its Telegram channel a new message after the administrator denied the claims made by Wick. “I want to remind you that we are against any illegal use of images generated from our site,” the newly posted message reads. “We are against fraud and harming other people. All generated images on the site are intended for legal use only.”

This article is in no way, shape, or form condoning, advertising, or encouraging the use of AI for anything illegal, least of all fake documentation.

But these discussions are important because there have been so many issues coming out of the woodwork. People keep finding increasingly unethical and illegal ways to test different AI models. Besides that, we can’t seem to agree on how to reign it in. And now, we’ve exposed our financial economies. Ripe for the picking.

Have we jumped in too soon?

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