I came across a jaw-dropping post on LinkedIn recently and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Here’s the short version:

Joe was having dinner with a CEO when the CEO’s lawyer called. A new employee was accusing the CEO of inappropriate behavior on Zoom and she had audio recordings to prove it. The CEO swore the conversations never happened.

So they listened to the recordings together. It sounded exactly like him. But it wasn’t. Someone had stitched together old keynote clips and uploaded them into an AI voice model. Then used that synthetic voice to fake entire conversations, each over 20 minutes long. To the employee, it was real. To the CEO and Joe? It sounded real too.

The FBI is now involved.

Let that sink in because that’s exactly how good AI is getting.

Here’s the part that should make all of us pause: a few days after I read Joe’s post, I saw another one. This time, it was a photo. A completely realistic restaurant receipt. Sure, it lacked date and time and some other details, but that is just a matter of perfecting the image prompt. It looked real and perfectly formatted. Except it was 100% AI-generated.

But if it was submitted as an expense, the approver wouldn’t even notice. AI image generation has gotten that good. And the tools to do create this with are VERY affordable to most of us.

Another one showed up in my feed yesterday: people are using AI to fake car damage, such as making scratches appear on your shiny Mercedes, for “light” insurance fraud.

From fake voices to fake documents and images, AI isn’t just reshaping how we work. It’s reshaping what we trust.

It’s easy to dismiss these stories as edge cases. “That won’t happen to me.” But what happens when this tech gets even cheaper, even faster, and even more accessible? What happens when it does happen to someone you know?

We’re not just dealing with fake receipts or AI voices. We’re dealing with a deeper erosion of trust. Trust in what we see. Trust in what we hear. Trust in what’s “real.” And that has ripple effects, not just in law firms or boardrooms, but in how we work and show up every day.

If you’re a coach, consultant, speaker, or advisor, your voice is your value. If you lead a team, your clarity and discernment are what people count on. If you’re building a business, your credibility is everything.

That’s why this moment matters.

You don’t only have to learn to “use AI tools.” You also have to protect the integrity of how you work, while still evolving with the tools.

You don’t need to chase every new headline or app. But you do need to get intentional. Intentional about what you automate. Intentional about what you create. Intentional about what you trust. Because in a world where anything can be faked, clarity, confidence, and human connection are your most valuable assets.

Let’s start there.

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Curious about how AI fits into your work, but not sure where to start?

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