Equipped to Be Deceived : Employee preparedness for AI-driven manipulation within Skåne’s financial sector

Sammanfattning

This study examines to what extent employees at financial institutions in Skåne are equipped to detect and respond to AI-driven manipulation and fraud. As generative AI (GAI) makes synthetic media increasingly difficult to distinguish from authentic content, financial institutions face a threat that their existing organizational structures were not designed to address. Building on nine semi-structured interviews with employees across four financial institutions, the study adopts a qualitative approach and applies Sensemaking Theory, Warranting Theory and Organizational Learning Theory to examine how manipulated information is interpreted, evaluated and acted upon in an everyday work setting. The findings suggest that employee preparedness is unevenly distributed across roles and organizations, shaped by structural conditions rather than individual competence. Detection capabilities have developed among employees repeatedly exposed to fraudulent material, while customer-facing staff operating under time pressure remain largely unequipped. A practical exercise that involved AI-generated voice messages demonstrated how the credibility signals employees rely on are replicable through commercially available tools, rendering perceptual judgment insufficient. The study concludes that employee preparedness is fundamentally an organizational challenge. Addressing it requires redesigned verification procedures, adequate training and a systemic understanding of how detection capabilities are distributed across roles.