Deepfakes, Elections and Balance Sheets: Bangladesh’s AI Report as a Case Study

When the same AI stack powers both national strategy and scams

Bangladesh’s latest AI milestone didn’t come from a Big Tech lab – it came from the ICT Tower in Dhaka. In November 2025, the government, with UNESCO and UNDP, launched its first AI Readiness Assessment (RAM) Report, a detailed map of how ready the country is legally, technically and socially to adopt AI.

On paper, the ambitions are big: a National AI Policy 2024 and a broader AI strategy that aims to make Bangladesh a regional hub, with pillars spanning research, skills, infrastructure and governance.

At the same time, news outlets and researchers are documenting AI-generated deepfakes and “cheap fakes” in Bangladeshi politics, plus the use of synthetic video and audio in financial scams across South Asia.

Most headlines focus on the horror stories. For tech investors, family offices and regulators, the deeper story is a tension you can price: governments like Bangladesh are courting AI investment while simultaneously fighting AI-fuelled disinformation and fraud. That tension will shape which AI/security firms become national champions and which platforms are trusted enough for long-term capital.

Bangladesh’s AI push, and its “attack surface”

1. The AI readiness and policy stack

• AI Readiness Assessment (RAM), Nov 2025
  • First national readiness report, co-developed with UNESCO and UNDP.
  • Finds strong e-government foundations and high public trust in digital services.
  • Flags gaps: rural connectivity and power, limited high-end compute, gender and urban–rural divides, weak data protection and cyber capacity.
• National AI Policy 2024 (draft / early implementation)
  • Objectives: boost growth, raise labour productivity, support SDG-linked goals.
  • Priorities: public services, manufacturing, agriculture, transport, skills, finance/trade, healthcare – with an explicit emphasis on ethics, inclusion and explainability.
• National Strategy for AI (multi-year)
  • Six pillars: R&D, skills, data/digital infrastructure, governance, public services, and ecosystem-building.
  • Frames Bangladesh as a future AI solution hub for the region, with coordinated government–industry–academia efforts.

For investors, the signal is clear: AI infra isn’t a side project it’s embedded in national growth plans.

2. Deepfakes and disinformation around elections

Bangladesh is also a live lab for AI misuse:

• 2023–24: Investigations by Financial Times and others found AI-generated videos used by pro-government outlets to smear opposition figures and foreign governments, using cheap tools to create “good enough” fakes.
• 2024–25: Local media and fact-checkers reported deepfake or AI-style videos of opposition leaders, with commentators describing AI-driven disinformation as a “pandemic” ahead of elections.
• Global studies of election deepfakes note Bangladesh as a case where “cheap fakes” outnumber full deepfakes, but both forms appear around key voting moments.

So the same state that’s partnering with UNESCO to build ethical AI is watching its information space get stressed by AI-enabled propaganda.

3. The fraud and fintech angle

The CoinGeek coverage that triggered this brief connects Bangladesh’s AI report to a broader investment boom in deepfake-detection and anti-fraud tools:

• Startups like Doppel have raised tens of millions of dollars (US$70m Series C, near-400% growth since early 2024) to detect synthetic media in real time and defend against social-engineering, fraud and phishing.
• Globally, regulators, payment networks and banks report triple-digit percentage growth in AI-driven scams in the last 2–3 years, including deepfake voice and video used to trick staff and clients.

Bangladesh is not yet a top global cyber-finance hub, but it shares the same attack surface: social-media-heavy populations, pro-growth AI rhetoric, and relatively young regulatory frameworks.

Q&A: A regional AI policy expert on why Bangladesh matters to investors

We spoke (on background) with a South Asia–based advisor who works with governments and multinationals on AI regulation.

I-Invest: Why should global investors care about an AI report from Bangladesh?

Expert: Because it shows you the shape of the next tier of AI markets.

Everyone tracks US, EU, China. But a country like Bangladesh 170m people, growing digital economy, strong e-gov foundations is exactly where the next wave of AI infra, cloud, and cyber vendors will fight for market share.

The RAM Report is unusually frank: it highlights limited compute, patchy power and skills gaps, but also very high trust in government digital services. That’s a rare combination: citizens will likely accept AI in public services if it’s done right.

For investors, that means you’re looking at:

• A state actively shopping for partners in cloud, AI infra, cyber and privacy tech;
• A population where trust can be preserved or lost quickly, depending on how AI and deepfakes are handled.

I-Invest: How do deepfakes change the investment story, beyond the headlines?

Expert: Deepfakes are the visible edge of a bigger risk surface.

In Bangladesh and across South Asia, you have:

• Political deepfakes and “cheap fakes” around elections, often low-budget but high-impact.
• Financial scams using AI-generated video and voice – from impersonating politicians promoting fake schemes in India, to synthetic “bank officials” or “bosses” authorising transfers.

That combination forces governments, banks and platforms to spend real money on defences: detection, KYC, transaction monitoring, identity verification. The investable angle is:

The worse the deepfake problem, the stronger the demand for high-quality verification, cyber and regtech solutions.

Bangladesh’s AI readiness project explicitly calls out the need for stronger data protection, cybersecurity and AI skills – that’s a shopping list.

I-Invest: Where do you see “national champion” opportunities coming out of this?

Expert: Three buckets.

1. AI infra and cloud with trust baked in
   • Providers who can offer sovereign-friendly cloud, local data centres, and compliance with UNESCO AI ethics principles will have an edge.
   • Bangladesh’s strategy leans toward human-centred, explainable AI in public services (health, education, social protection). Firms that can build auditable models and tools for local languages will be sticky partners.
2. Cybersecurity and deepfake detection
   • Think identity-centric security, liveness checks, audio-video forensics, and fraud-analytics rails that banks and telcos can plug into.
   • The global capital going into firms like Doppel is the early wave; emerging-market deployments in places like Dhaka, Lagos or Jakarta are the second wave where growth and margins can be strong.
3. Trusted media and verification platforms
   • Bangladesh is already cited in global work on deepfake and “cheap fake” election content. There is room for regional fact-checking consortia, watermarking services, and verified-media brands that financial and political audiences trust.

Investors who can spot and back these “trust rails” early – not just the flashy consumer AI apps – are playing the structural game.

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I-Invest: How should family offices and long-horizon investors think about positioning?

Expert: Treat trust tech as part of your legacy allocation.

For family offices allocating to AI and digital in EMs:

• Carve out a sleeve for:
  • Deepfake and fraud detection;
  • Regtech and KYC/AML automation;
  • Secure digital ID and verifiable credentials;
  • “Explainable AI” tooling for governments and banks.
• Look for business models tied to regulated clients – ministries, banks, telcos – where churn is low and budgets are recurring.
• Treat trusted financial and policy media as part of your defensives. In an environment where anyone’s face and voice can be faked, brands that consistently debunk and contextualise become more valuable over time.

Bangladesh’s AI RAM is one of the first in South Asia to explicitly connect AI adoption, rights, inclusion and institutional trust. That’s a blueprint other countries will copy – and it’s a map of where capex and opex will flow.

I-Invest: For regulators reading this, what’s the practical takeaway?

Expert: Don’t treat AI industrial policy and AI safety as separate files.

Bangladesh’s case shows you can:

• Launch an AI growth strategy;
• Commission a readiness report that honestly lists your vulnerabilities;
• Start to align AI policy with data protection, cybersecurity and election integrity concerns.

For regulators in other EMs:

• Copy the RAM approach – assess your readiness in infrastructure, law, skills and social trust.
• Build procurement signals into that: say explicitly that public-sector AI must be auditable, secure and rights-preserving.
• Encourage domestic players in detection, cyber and regtech, but hold them to global standards so they can scale.

If you do that, you increase the odds that your “AI national champions” sit on the right side of history: defending your information space and financial system, not quietly eroding them.

Positioning Bangladesh as a legacy case – not just a risk story

For I-Invest’s audience, Bangladesh is a Tier-3 risk market but a Tier-1 case study:

• It shows how quickly AI industrial policy and AI-abuse incidents can coexist.
• It points to a future where national AI roadmaps are inseparable from cyber, media integrity and financial-fraud policy.
• It highlights a category of enduring assets – security, verification and trusted-media rails – that families can own through cycles.

In a world where anyone’s face can be faked, the long-term capital story is simple:

Back the infrastructure that lets societies keep believing what they see – and what their balance sheets say.

Important: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal or regulatory advice. AI and cyber-security rules are evolving quickly; readers should seek professional advice tailored to their jurisdiction and risk profile.