Interviewing Marco Ramilli: IdentifAI's de-generative race against deepfakes

In this episode, we sit down with Marco Ramilli, co-founder and CEO of IdentifAI, the Milan-based startup applying a cybersecurity mindset to deepfake detection. Marco, a PhD computer security researcher who worked at NIST and previously founded Yoroi (acquired by Tinexta in 2024), explains how IdentifAI builds "de-generative" AI models that reverse-engineer how generators like Midjourney and Nano Banana work, then catch their outputs in the wild.

We get into the verticals where the threats are real today: KYC checks at banks, fraudulent insurance claims (Marco says ~35% of uploaded damage images are now AI-generated), state-sponsored disinformation, journalist fact-checking, and HR processes where attackers join job interviews as deepfake candidates to social-engineer their way into companies. Marco walks through IdentifAI's three products, an API, a web app, and a live "noteseeker"-style agent that silently sits in on video calls and flags fakes in real time, and shares the model accuracy numbers (~98% on internal benchmarks, ~90–92% in the real world) plus what happens when a new generator like Nano Banana drops.

We also dig into the €5M Series A led by United Ventures, the EMEA-first go-to-market plan, IdentifAI's Deepfake Intelligence Report (the US accounts for almost half of recorded incidents), the European sovereignty angle, and the EU AI Act. We close with Marco showing us a live, real-time deepfake of his own face, built, he says, with "a couple of Python scripts on your laptop."

🙋‍♂️ Guest: Marco Ramilli, co-founder and CEO, IdentifAI
📩 Connect with Marco on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcoramilli
🔗 IdentifAI on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/identifai-labs
🌐 IdentifAI: https://identifai.net