Singapore senior managers most likely to trust deepfake CEO

KnowBe4 has published research on deepfake and voice-cloning risks in Singapore workplaces. The study found that Senior Managers were the group most likely to comply with an AI-cloned Chief Executive Officer voice before verifying it.

Based on a Censuswide survey of 500 Singapore-based office workers, the research examined how employees respond to AI-generated messages that appear to come from senior executives. It points to a split in workplace risk: hesitation among junior and mid-level staff to challenge leadership, and high confidence among Senior Managers that does not always translate into caution.

More than a third of respondents, 36%, said they were not confident they could distinguish a genuine message from their Chief Executive Officer from one generated using AI. Half said they would feel uncomfortable challenging a request from a senior executive, while 52% said they would worry about negative consequences if they did so.

The findings suggest those pressures shape how staff weigh cyber risk against internal hierarchy. Some 45% said they would be as worried about delaying a request from a senior leader as they would be about causing a cybersecurity incident, while 9% said they would rather risk a breach than delay the boss.

Hierarchy risk

Senior Managers were the most confident group when asked whether they could identify a fake message, with 78% saying they believed they could. Yet they were also the group most likely to comply with a cloned Chief Executive Officer voice before carrying out checks, at 35%.

That was more than double the rate among Clerical Workers, where 16% said they would comply before verifying the request. The gap suggests that confidence in spotting manipulated audio or messages does not necessarily reduce the likelihood of acting on them.

Training levels also appeared limited. Only 26% of respondents said they had received training specifically on AI-generated scams involving senior leaders.

The findings show that this training was concentrated among Senior Managers, even though the same group showed the highest stated likelihood of complying with an impersonated executive request before verification. Only 10% of respondents identified employees trusting senior leaders too readily as the greatest cybersecurity risk facing their workplace.

The result suggests that authority-based manipulation remains under-recognised inside organisations, despite growing concern about the realism of AI-generated audio and video. In practice, scams built around impersonating a senior executive rely less on defeating technical controls than on persuading an employee to approve a payment, disclose credentials, or bypass normal checks.

Behaviour gap

The study adds to a wider debate over whether companies place too much weight on technical detection tools when assessing their exposure to deepfake attacks. In workplace settings where deference to seniority is common, a convincing message from a leader may create pressure to act quickly rather than verify it independently.

The issue appears particularly acute in Singapore, where the report argues that organisational hierarchy can act as a trust shortcut. Staff may fear the social or professional cost of questioning an urgent instruction, especially if it appears to come from the top of the business.

"In Singapore, hierarchy works like a trust shortcut, one that AI-enabled scams are now designed to exploit," said Dr Kawin Boonyapredee, Chief Information Security Officer Advisor at KnowBe4. "A cloned voice or a convincing message from 'the boss' doesn't need to fool the technology. It only needs to activate an instinct not to question authority. Closing that gap requires training and simulations to change behaviour at every level of seniority, not just awareness at the top."

The findings also highlight a management challenge for companies trying to measure readiness for AI-enabled fraud. Senior employees may rate themselves highly on awareness, but still remain vulnerable if they respond quickly to apparent instructions from another senior figure without using verification steps.

For Boards and Security Teams, the figures point to a need to examine who is most likely to comply with suspicious requests, and under what conditions, rather than focusing only on whether staff believe they can recognise manipulated content. The survey indicates that confidence, status, and workplace culture may shape risk as much as technical familiarity with deepfakes.

The results support more targeted staff training around executive impersonation scams, especially as AI-generated voice cloning becomes harder to distinguish from real speech. The survey found that only 26% of workers had received that kind of training.