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It’s hard to talk about fakes and counterfeits nowadays without mentioning artificial intelligence. Mainstream media is awash in stories about what generative AI can do, and not always for the greater good of mankind. Of course, doctoring information to deceive is nothing new, but the level of sophistication that’s available now makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish real from counterfeit. Attention to subtle details is the key to detecting and avoiding a counterfeiter, a deep fake, or a phishing text.
So, what does all this mean to the EMS industry? Counterfeiting has been an ongoing threat for the past 30 years or so, and one can argue that it’s on the increase. Our reputation as assemblers is at stake if we lose control of our parts inventories and find ourselves building product with counterfeit parts. While it might sometimes be as easy as paying attention to the component labeling, counterfeiting techniques now include functional spoofing of the genuine part—the EMS equivalent of a deepfake video, perhaps.
Our vigilance and sophistication must rise to match the inventiveness of the bad actors. Learn more in the October 2024 issue of SMT007 Magazine.
