If you’re going to train people on how to recognize AI-generated deepfakes, who better to recruit than the deepfake pioneer himself, Conan O’Brien?
That’s what the cybersecurity AI firm Adaptive Security did, enlisting the Emmy-winning comedian to star in a 15-part training series for its customers exploring the various cyber threats emerging in the AI age, from voice cloning and impersonations to the ever-present threats like phishing and even physical safety. The series was filmed this spring in Los Angeles, with scripts co-written by staffers at O’Brien’s production company Team Coco and Adaptive Security (though not without some of O’Brien’s standard improvisation).
New York-based Adaptive, co-founded in 2024 by Brian Long and Andrew Jones, aims to train its business clientele on how to navigate cybersecurity threats proliferating online, including many that’ve emerged during the generative AI wave. The company cites a Deloitte projection that fraud campaigns using AI will grow losses from $12.3 billion in 2023 to $40 billion in 2027.
“There’s really a before and after,” Jones, who is Adaptive Security’s chief product officer, told Variety. “There’s the before, which was pre-AI, and then there’s the after, which is after AI — and after AI, these attacks have gotten much more sophisticated. There’s a lot more of them, they’re much harder to detect and remediate, so it’s already a huge problem. And as the technology, the underlying models become more efficient and effective, it’s only going to get scarier, and so that’s why we think it’s really important for businesses to have a strategy and a plan here to help keep themselves and their organization safe.”
