Digital Media Fraud in Insurance Claims: AI Deepfakes & Detection Guide

August 6, 2025 / 3 min read

The growing sophistication and volume of digital media fraud powered by artificial intelligence (AI) put insurance claims organizations under ever-increasing pressure to keep pace. Any fraudster with a smartphone can now access and use rapidly evolving editing tools and technologies—with little to no training or technical knowledge.

While the power to manipulate images is a far cry from even a few years ago when investigators were more concerned with fake or doctored documents, fake documents are still an ongoing concern. The new generation of digital media fraud is increasingly difficult to detect and prevent with the human eye.

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Deepfakes and shallowfakes

Widely available AI tools can now generate deepfake images from scratch or make convincing edits to existing images. In seconds, fraudsters can modify an entire image or a small portion, altering, inpainting, or filling sections to change or hide information.

AI can entirely fabricate deepfakes or selectively alter images using in-app capabilities or, with the latest smartphones, AI features built right into Android and iOS operating systems. Even without AI, conventional editing software on phones or desktop apps such as Adobe Photoshop can produce shallowfake images that are realistic enough to pass a cursory examination.

Adobe released “Generative AI Fill” for Photoshop in September 2023, and scammers realized it was an easy way to forge images to boost insurance claims. Now, every scammer can access this powerful technology, and it requires near-zero experience with the software.

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Document fraud

Given the formidable new threats from image fraud, tinkering with documents or creating false ones may seem quaint by comparison. But document fraud hasn’t gone away, although detecting it is more within insurers’ established capabilities.

Digital documents have selectable and searchable text that’s easy to analyze for red flags: suspicious terms, altered values, or duplicated information, for example. Forensic tools can search and compare text across documents to detect fraud patterns such as reused templates (e.g., duplicated serial numbers) or internal inconsistencies such as not updating fields that should contain unique information—tax paid, credit card numbers, time stamps, and the like.

Rich metadata, similar to that in images, can make verifying the integrity of content easier, revealing what software was used to create it and when.

Digital signatures such as DocuSign provide opportunities to verify documents’ authenticity systematically, ensuring the structure is consistent with the PDF and validating the signature through signing authorities.

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Re-using prior-loss images

One common scheme we’ve seen fraudsters use for years is submitting a photo from a prior loss as new damage for a claim. This scheme is likely to go undetected, especially if the claimant switches carriers, which means there is no record of the prior-loss images.

But it’s not just claimants that perpetrate this tactic. Some third-party suppliers such as independent adjusters, repair contractors, or auto body shops might re-use images to inflate bills or cut corners on providing estimates. For example, Verisk helped a carrier investigate an appraiser’s claims and discovered he submitted 170 duplicate photos over two years, impacting claims with over $1 million in indemnity paid out.

Using photos from the Internet

Another tactic fraudsters use is downloading a photo of damage from the Internet and submitting it with a claim. With no adjusters visiting a property or vehicle to verify the damage, this is another scheme that can go easily undetected.

By extracting the rich metadata embedded within digital media, carriers can identify potential modifications and corroborate location and date of capture with claim information to detect potential misuse.

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A challenge that won’t wait

The rapidly growing scope, volume, and sophistication of digital media fraud calls for insurers to respond in kind: to act quickly and decisively, allocate sufficient resources, and deploy the best tools to match the fraudsters’ rising onslaught. Fraudulent tactics will continue to evolve with technology and demand constant innovation in the anti-fraud space.

Advancements in technology now allow potential image fraud detection for both Claim Adjusters and SIU Investigators. Find out more about the latest developments and the most advanced fraud detection capabilities to stay ahead of this ongoing challenge.

Learn more about Verisk’s Digital Media Forensics, available through ClaimSeach.

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