Abstract

The rapid commercialization of generative AI has created a troubling convergence: the same synthetic media tools marketed for legitimate business applications, including AI avatars for marketing videos, voice cloning for content localization, and video generation for advertising, provide identical capabilities exploited for financial fraud, identity theft, and social engineering attacks. This paper analyzes this marketing-fraud convergence through systematic examination of current synthetic media platforms and documented fraud cases. Building on the Authenticity Spectrum Framework (ASF) introduced in prior work [1], the analysis demonstrates that architectural similarities between marketing and fraud applications create fundamental governance challenges that platform-level controls alone cannot address. Analysis of representative platforms reveals that tools generating synthetic user-generated content for advertising operate on identical technical principles to systems enabling deepfake business email compromise, synthetic identity fraud, and investment scams. This paper presents a dual-use risk assessment framework enabling financial institutions, platform operators, and regulators to evaluate synthetic media services for fraud potential. The framework maps specific technical capabilities to established financial crime vectors, providing actionable guidance for compliance and risk management programs.

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