Businesses are scrambling to keep themselves safe against AI’s evolving threats

Good morning. Elon Musk and Donald Trump aren’t done fighting over the president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — and Musk came out swinging last night. Writing on X, Musk said if the “insane spending bill” passes, he’ll form a new political party (can you guess what it would be called?).

In response, Trump suggested that DOGE look into slashing government contracts with Musk’s companies. “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Here’s the latest.

In today’s big story, watch out for fake job candidates, fake recruiters, and fake sales. America’s small business owners are being swamped by scammers.

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What’s on deck

Markets: Why Morgan Stanley is predicting potential stock market highs in the second half of the year.

Tech: Mira Murati’s secretive AI startup is offering $450,000+ salaries to lock in top talent.

Business: Apple’s “F1” movie got the no. 1 spot at the box office — but that might be a one-off.

But first, something seems suspicious …

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The big story

The Deepfake Economy

If you fall for it, the consequences can be devastating. Last year, a finance clerk at the engineering firm Arup joined a video call with people he believed were his colleagues. It turned out that each of the attendees was a deepfake recreation of a real coworker — including the company’s finance chief. Convinced by the ruse, the clerk approved over $25 million in overseas transfers.

Scams like this are becoming more common. Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene, online businesses have had to navigate a rapidly expanding deepfake economy. In the past year alone, GenAI-enabled scams have quadrupled, according to the platform Chainabuse.

BI spoke with professionals in several industries — including recruitment, graphic design, publishing, and healthcare — who are scrambling to keep themselves and their customers safe against AI’s ever-evolving threats.

Many feel like they’re playing an endless game of whack-a-mole, Shubham Agarwal writes for BI. Now, the moles are multiplying and getting smarter.

You would never be fooled, right?

Don’t be so sure. The VP of strategy at a cybersecurity firm said GenAI tools now allow a novice with cheap programs and little technical know-how to clone a brand’s image and write flawless scam messages within minutes.

Agarwal put this to the test using a tool called Llama Press. Sure enough, they created a near-perfect clone of an online store — and personalized it with just a few lines of instruction.

BI’s Amanda Hoover was also able to deepfake her own bank with relative ease. All it took was an AI voice generator and a phone call.

While platforms like Teams and Zoom are getting better at detecting deepfakes, they can also create a problem. The data these platforms collect on what’s fake could ultimately be used to train more sophisticated GenAI models, the CEO of a cybersecurity firm told BI.

3 things in markets

1. AI is speeding up the slow investment game. Fundamental investors are known for taking a slow and methodical approach to their investing, but AI is about to change all of that. Three firms using the tech share how it’s transforming their investment processes.

2. A market vet forecasts the S&P 500 breaking 10,000 by the end of the decade. Ed Yardeni, a longtime forecaster and the president of Yardeni Research, said stocks are now in “melt-up” mode and the S&P 500 could soar 60% by 2030.

3. The stock market’s secret weapon. Earnings revisions breadth, or the number of analysts who are raising their estimates minus those lowering them, has improved significantly in recent months. Morgan Stanley sees that as powering further market gains.

3 things in tech

1. Tech’s most powerful relationship is on the rocks. Microsoft is OpenAI’s biggest investor, but tensions over the terms of their partnership are boiling over. Money and equity are huge sticking points, and they’re also beefing over AGI and OpenAI’s acquisition of a Copilot competitor.

2. Mira Murati’s startup is paying top dollar to win the AI arms race. Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab is paying two members of its technical team $450,000 in salary, and another is getting $500,000, according to federal data obtained by BI. That’s a lot more than the average salaries offered to technical talent by OpenAI and Anthropic, Murati’s top competitors.

3. Here’s what that $14 billion hire is doing at Meta. Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old Scale AI founder Mark Zuckerberg hired last month, will be coleading Meta’s new superintelligence lab with former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. Read the memo announcing their roles.

3 things in business

1. Lululemon is suing Costco. The athleisure brand is accusing Costco of creating “confusingly similar” dupes of its yoga jackets and chinos. Lululemon is asking for damages in the form of lost profits and compensation for patent infringement, but it’s not the first time the brand has accused a company of copyright infringement.

2. Apple’s “F1” has a special sauce of epic proportions. The racing movie got a huge boost from Imax, which said on Monday it made up 19% of the film’s global box office sales. Imax tickets cost more, helping Apple beat box office expectations — but that boost might not apply for other films down the line.

3. What GOP senators changed in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Senate Republicans altered a controversial provision, discouraging states from regulating AI for five years instead of the originally written 10. The bill is making its way through the legislature, much to Elon Musk’s dismay: on X, he vowed to defeat Republicans who back it “if it is the last thing I do.”

In other news

• Private equity giant TPG halts early recruiting.
• A team of engineers saved Morgan Stanley more than 280,000 hours this year. The bank says their tool won’t take jobs.
• Emily Sundberg got laid off at Meta. Now her Feed Me is a thriving one-person media business.
• GOP senators water down controversial AI provision in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill.’
• See Trump’s handwritten note to Jerome Powell complaining about interest rates.
• Crypto could soon help more people get a mortgage — but market experts see two risks.
• Kevin O’Leary’s advice for 21-year-old entrepreneurs who don’t know where to start.
• Self-made billionaire John Calamos says young people need to hustle — and have a mission in life — to be successful.

What’s happening today

• Settlement between NCAA and college athletes goes into effect, allowing colleges to compensate athletes directly for using their name, image, and likeness (NIL).
• Jerome Powell speaks at ECB Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal.

• New York mayoral Democratic primary election results expected.

  Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Meghan Morris, bureau chief, in Singapore. Grace Lett, editor, in Chicago. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Ella Hopkins, associate editor, in London. Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York (on parental leave).

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