Deepfakes Outpace Verification: Crisis Comms Gets Pressure-Tested

A convincing deepfake can reach employees and reporters long before anyone proves it's fake — and by then, the damage to trust may already be done. That was the warning from Lisa Burris, senior director of corporate communications at Elevance Health, speaking at the preconference workshops of Ragan's Future of Communications Conference in Austin.

Crisis communicators now face two distinct challenges, Burris told the audience: "First, we must help establish what is actually happening, and second, understand what stakeholders believe is happening. They're not always the same, but both influence trust, behavior and reputation."

Impersonation and cyber incidents aren't new territory for communicators, Burris said. What's changed is how convincing fabricated content has become and how easily one threat feeds another — a cyberattack paired with a fake executive statement, for example.

"Technology hasn't replaced the fundamentals of crisis communication, but it's intensified the consequences of getting it wrong," she said. "Accuracy still matters. Empathy still matters. Transparency still matters. But our ability to deliver those fundamentals depends more than ever on how quickly we can verify information, mobilize the right people and make sound decisions under pressure."

Does your crisis plan survive the new threat mix?

Traditional approval processes weren't built for how fast information now moves, Burris said. Her crisis response model is designed to hold up when several threats hit at once.

"Not every organization needs a new playbook," she said. "But how does what you have today work in this new environment? We need to pressure test it."

She warned that delays from teams working off different information and timelines can be a bigger risk than the threat itself. "The goal isn't for communications to take over," Burris said. "What you need to do is be integrated into the response command center from the beginning, so that stakeholder needs and reputational consequences inform the decisions being made. That means agreeing in advance on escalation triggers, roles, decision rights and approval processes."

Which metrics actually matter mid-crisis?

Media coverage and share of voice remain valuable crisis metrics, Burris said, but they can miss the bigger picture when a cyber incident disrupts operations and reputation simultaneously.

"A rise in negative sentiment may be important," she said. "But a surge in customer calls, employee confusion or people following fraudulent instructions could be much more urgent."

Hilary Nemchik, vice president of external affairs at the U.S. Center for SafeSport, described a lean-team approach. Her team has no budget for a full data pipeline feeding dashboards, so it pulls web analytics and media data into spreadsheets and uses AI to interpret them.

"AI has supported us in organizing, formatting and summarizing data, with callbacks to make sure everything is accurate," Nemchik said. "This allows us to spot trends and identify where audiences do and don't understand aspects of our process. This analysis led to the creation of a new landing page to better explain our public-facing database in a way that answers the questions that emerge through our data."

How do you time the hardest call?

Deciding when to share a message in a crisis is one of the hardest choices comms leaders make, Burris said. Move too fast and you risk sharing information that later proves wrong. Wait for a perfectly polished corporate statement, and people who need guidance to protect their information get none.

"We don't have to know everything to communicate responsibly," Burris said. "We do have to be clear about what we know and don't know, and what we are doing. And if we're confronting a deepfake or fabricated claim, we need credible verification processes, rather than simply asserting that something just isn't real."

Nemchik added that credibility extends far beyond the first response — it's an ongoing, evolving process. "Ultimately, organizations that answer questions clearly, demonstrate expertise and provide useful content are the ones who succeed at landing messages with audiences and meeting them where they're at," she said.

The takeaway: verification speed, pre-agreed decision rights and behavioral signals now decide whether crisis comms holds or breaks.