The electronic identity verification (eIDV) industry frequently highlights the measures it uses to combat fraud, AI-driven attacks, and synthetic identities, pointing to advancements such as passport chip verification (PCV).
However, the core issue is simple: we are waiting for the fire before deciding how to fight it.
AI has created two fundamental challenges. The first is the emergence of increasingly creative routes to commit fraud. The second—and more dangerous—is speed. Speed is our greatest enemy. When AI is placed in the hands of criminals, it enables them to react to new controls and countermeasures at lightning pace.
It is like installing new locks on your doors, only for a criminal to arrive minutes later already knowing how to pick them.
As an industry, we must stop being reactive and become truly proactive. That means thinking like criminals do. We must understand where our protection points are and reinforce them now—not because they are weak today, but because they will be weak tomorrow.
Much is made of NFC-based PCV as the highest level of identity assurance, and it is hard to disagree. The data stored on the chip is indisputable. But if AI can generate a human that convincingly matches that chip data, have we verified an identity—or have we simply been beaten at our own game?
Today’s objective should be to solve tomorrow’s problem. We must develop ways to be certain that the human is real, before AI gets there first.
At Simplified.ID we have a team who’s focus is on tomorrows threat and we are already working on novel ways to authenticate video journeys in real-time before AI can have a chance to manipulate them and pose as the man in the middle.
