The rising prevalence of terrifyingly realistic deepfakes, a byproduct of AI advancements, has resulted in significant financial losses for companies, with scams based on these deepfakes already costing them millions of dollars. Furthermore, the implications of these deepfakes on national security are substantial. A startup, GetReal, has developed a toolset designed to help governments and enterprises detect and prevent deepfakes and impersonations in audio, video, and still images. The company has announced funding, accompanied by notable customers and investors.

GetReal, co-founded by Hany Farid, a pioneer in detecting deepfake media, has secured $17.5 million in equity funding. This investment will be utilized for research and development, hiring, and business development purposes.

In conjunction with the funding, GetReal is launching its forensics platform as a service, which includes a web interface, an API, and integrations for media analysis. The platform features a threat exposure dashboard, an “Inspect” tool to protect high-profile executives from being spoofed, a “Protect” tool to screen media, and a “Respond” tool, which involves human teams at GetReal performing in-depth analysis.

Forgepoint Capital, a specialist in cybersecurity and AI, is leading this Series A funding round, with Ballistic Ventures, Evolution Equity, and K2 Access Fund participating.

Ballistic Ventures is a key player in this funding round, having incubated GetReal from 2022 until its emergence from stealth in June 2024. Ballistic also led GetReal’s $7 million seed funding round, which included investors such as Venrock, Artisanal, Qudit, and Silver Buckshot.

Ted Schlein, the founder of Ballistic Ventures, is also the chairman and co-founder of GetReal. Prior to founding Ballistic, Schlein headed Kleiner Perkins.

Hany as a Service

GetReal operates in the cybersecurity domain, specifically in the rapidly evolving area of cyber-forensics. The company is addressing the shortage of talent and knowledge in this space.

“If you think cybersecurity has a shortage of people, get ready for forensics,” said Matt Moynahan, GetReal’s CEO.

Moynahan, who joined GetReal while it was still in stealth, brings a three-decade-long career in leading major cybersecurity companies, including Symantec, Arbor Networks, Veracode, and Forcepoint.

“To be honest, I don’t think I’ve seen a threat this ubiquitous,” Moynahan said, referring to the ability to create and apply malicious deepfakes.

He described viruses as a “novel threat” in comparison, highlighting the shift in threats from traditional malware to more sophisticated attacks. Moynahan noted that “fun” apps that allow people to create deepfakes contribute to the problem, as does the increasingly digital nature of businesses.

Phishing attacks have demonstrated that even intelligent individuals can be easily tricked, and the combination of these factors poses a significant threat.

GetReal is the brainchild of Hany Farid, a renowned academic and pioneer in techniques for identifying doctored digital images. Farid has been applying his knowledge informally for years, working with media organizations, legal teams, and others.

In 2022, Farid teamed up with Ted Schlein to develop his investigative process into a business, translates his expertise into code.

“No one’s peering into this the way that Hany does,” Moynahan said. “But Hany can’t scale. So we basically took Hany and tried to create a ‘Hany service’ in the cloud.”

Interestingly, Farid notes that while the technology is dependent on understanding how new apps work, it also relies on decades of knowledge that has remained relatively unchanged.

“There are techniques we developed 20 years ago that still work today,” Farid said, declining to elaborate. “You don’t have to tell people everything we do, but it’s complicated to get right.”

The Signal Effect: Text Still to Come

The Series A funding round announced on Wednesday includes strategic backers such as Cisco Investments, Capital One Ventures, and In-Q-Tel, an investment firm closely linked to the CIA.

This list of strategic investors mirrors the types of companies interested in or already adopting GetReal’s product, according to Alberto Yépez, the co-founder of Forgepoint who led the investment.

During due diligence, Yépez found that heavily regulated industries, such as financial institutions, were seeking a product like GetReal’s, with CISOs reaching out on behalf of their boards of directors.

“They raised the issue [of deepfaked impersonations] after their CEOs had been put into voice interviews,” Yépez said. “They were impersonated themselves and tricked by impersonations.” Notable customers include John Deere and Visa.

Regarding government work, Yépez said, “They also have some priorities in the space.” These priorities include intelligence agencies and government officials being tricked into acting or not acting based on fake information from bad actors.

However, these priorities have yet to extend to text-based impersonations.

This week, the editor of The Atlantic was mistakenly added to a Signal group chat planning a military attack in Yemen, which was initially assumed to be an impersonation hoax. However, the chat turned out to be real and a violation of national security procedures.

Farid stated that text is not currently within GetReal’s scope. “It is a different beast,” he said. However, the plan is to expand the scope over time to include all types of deepfake and impersonation threats.