Follow Innovate UK on the latest Global Expert Mission in civil security to Singapore

Strategic objectives of the Mission

The primary goal of the Global Expert Mission is to gather valuable insights and explore potential opportunities for collaborative innovation in civil security between businesses in the UK and Singapore.

The insights acquired during the mission will play a crucial role in guiding Innovate UK on how to enhance support for UK businesses looking to establish partnerships with organisations in Singapore.

The mission will focus on several areas key to assessing the appetite and opportunities for collaborative innovation. These areas include:

• Providing an overview of crucial enabling technologies essential for addressing challenges in the civil security sector.
• Conducting a comprehensive review of synergies in policy, security priorities, and strategy between the two countries.
• Offering sector-specific intelligence and knowledge regarding Singapore’s market for civil security products and services.
• Enhancing the understanding of the innovation landscape in Singapore, along with analysis and mapping of key stakeholders in the civil security sector.

The increasing threat of deepfakes

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI), with a particular focus on deepfake technology, poses a formidable strategic threat to UK law enforcement. Deepfakes, fuelled by advanced machine learning algorithms, enable the creation of hyper-realistic synthetic content (image, video, text and audio) which is increasingly indistinguishable to the human eye from authentic material.

The widespread adoption of GAI has resulted in a significant increase in illicit deepfakes, predominantly using manipulated images and voices, with a simultaneous increase in videos. Deepfakes are increasingly used to magnify and tailor existing criminal activities, encompassing the creation of abuse material, fraud, grooming, extortion, blackmail, undermining trust and confidence in public bodies, and undermining the criminal justice system, as well as circumvention of identity verification within government systems.

GAI and large language models have also significantly reduced the barrier for fraudsters running industrial-scale email phishing scams, as well as more sophisticated targeted frauds using voice cloning.

To address these evolving challenges, UK policing and the UK Government are increasingly investing in several areas to explore solutions and capabilities that can identify and mitigate the use of GAI models in criminal activity.

The pace at which GAI models are evolving, and the motivation for criminals to bypass safeguards, presents a significant challenge for police and law enforcement. Requiring a whole-system approach to innovation that enables development, testing, deployment, and evolution of mitigation and detection capabilities to keep pace. This is not a UK-specific challenge, but one that we believe to be internationally shared. Our collective ability to respond at pace and with confidence will be significantly enhanced through greater international collaboration on research, development and commercialisation of technology capabilities.

Like the UK, Singapore is grappling with the challenges presented by GAI. With a strong emphasises on the rule of law and a track record of using cutting edge technology to protect the public and deter criminals, Singapore is well-aligned to the UK’s commitment and strategy in addressing common security threats.

The team is looking forward to expanding international collaborations. Follow us on X: @IUK_Global and #SingCivSecGEM.

About Global Expert Missions

Global Expert Missions (GEMs) are funded by Innovate UK and designed to build international collaborations with governments, societies, enterprises, institutions, and people from every corner of the globe. With global challenges requiring international perspectives, the programme aims to support the UK government’s ambition to be the international partner of choice and a global hub for innovation by 2035.