Texting your new coworker minutes before your first day a...

Conversation

1. okay this is happening—Slack just exploded with a deepfake of me.
2. what? send screenshot now.
3. sending but metadata shows creation from your laptop, Maya.
4. what the—my laptop? impossible, I was in meetings.
5. hold up who sent it to Slack?
6. someone uploaded it to #general two minutes ago from Jonas.
7. Jonas is HR, he would never upload without source.
8. weird metadata can be faked, deepfake probably traces wrong.
9. HR forwarded file; their metadata literally lists Maya's MAC address.
10. that MAC belongs to my laptop when I'm on VPN.
11. you were at my welcome meeting 10am; this was uploaded at 8:58am.
12. I was home, my laptop was asleep, ask my roommates.
13. Maya's Instagram story shows her at a café 7:30.
14. why would your laptop's metadata link to my name?
15. wait I shared a file with someone yesterday, forgot who.
16. leftover files sync could include audio—who did you share with?
17. I only shared onboarding schedule with Ava and Jonas.
18. Ava messaged me last night about dinner.
19. Ava's private account posted a story saying 'late night experiments'.
20. this is turning into a who-did-what chain.
21. someone could've used my laptop when I loaned it.
22. loaned it to who? names matter right now.
23. my ex, Lucas, he was here last night briefly.
24. Lucas is a podcaster who trolled people last month.
25. Lucas has motives? He hates your new job, Maya?
26. Lucas posted an inside joke about 'ruining first days' weeks ago.
27. HR just called; they want a formal statement in thirty minutes.
28. don't sign anything yet; get IT to image that laptop.
29. I can't have my first day be 'race bait deepfake' trending.
30. I didn't do this, I'm logging into cloud backups now.