Artificial intelligence technology is presenting new risks — and new opportunities — to financial institutions hoping to improve their cyber security and reduce fraud.

Banks and financial services groups have had to grapple with cyber attacks for decades, as their financial assets and huge customer databases make them prime targets for hackers.

Now, though, they are up against criminals using generative AI — which can trained on images and videos of real customers or executives, to produce audio and video clips impersonating them. These have the potential to fool cyber security systems, experts warn. According to a report by identity verification platform Sumsub, the number of “deepfake” incidents in the financial technology sector increased by 700 per cent in 2023, year on year.