Deepfake statistics 2026: key facts for New Zealand CFOs and finance leaders

A deepfake is synthetic media created with artificial intelligence, typically video, audio, or images altered to show someone saying or doing something that never happened. Fraudsters use the same technology to impersonate executives, vendors, and colleagues in payment scams. Read more on how deepfake AI works.

<p>Deepfake fraud is the use of AI-generated audio or video to impersonate a real person, usually an executive, vendor contact, or colleague, in order to authorise a fraudulent payment or extract sensitive information. <a href="https://www.eftsure.com/en-nz/blog/cyber-crime/what-is-deepfake-fraud/">Read the full breakdown of how deepfake fraud works</a>.</p>

Deepfake-enabled fraud, such as executive impersonation used to authorise a payment, isn't a separately named criminal offence in New Zealand. It's prosecuted under existing fraud and deception provisions in the Crimes Act 1961, which apply regardless of the method used to deceive. New Zealand does have a dedicated bill addressing other uses of deepfake technology, the Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill introduced in 2025, but it targets non-consensual intimate imagery, not payment fraud, which falls under general fraud law instead. For finance teams, this distinction matters in practice: prosecution can follow after a loss occurs, but it doesn't recover a payment already sent to a fraudster's account, which is why independent verification before payment remains the more reliable safeguard.