Conan O'Brien Is Teaching People How to Spot AI Scams at Work

A cybersecurity training company called Adaptive Security launched a 15-video training series on Tuesday with comedian Conan O'Brien. The videos teach employees how to recognize and avoid scams powered by artificial intelligence. According to the announcement on PR Newswire, the series covers voice phishing, deepfake video, and AI-assisted email scams.

What the Training Covers and Why It Matters

The scams these videos address are real threats happening right now. Voice phishing means criminals use AI to copy someone's voice — a boss, a colleague, a trusted contact — and call you pretending to be that person. Deepfake video works the same way with pictures: AI creates a convincing video of someone saying or doing something they never actually did. Email scams have gotten worse too. AI can now write convincing, personalized emails that sound natural and are hard to spot — unlike old phishing emails, which often had obvious spelling mistakes.

These are the threats Adaptive Security's videos tackle. Why use Conan O'Brien and comedy instead of the usual boring training modules? Because nobody watches regular corporate training videos if they don't have to. Completion rates are low, and people forget most of what they see. By putting security lessons into videos that are actually entertaining, the company is betting more employees will watch and remember the material.

Why Use a Celebrity?

According to Variety, O'Brien's role includes a deepfake bit — he demonstrates and jokes about deepfake technology in the videos themselves. This is clever pedagogy: you watch a funny, recognizable person do something, then learn how to spot whether that video is real or AI-created. The goal is to make you think critically about what you see on screen.

O'Brien also brings something practical: people who normally ignore security training might actually click play if a celebrity they like is hosting it. Millions of workers see workplace security training as a waste of time. A recognizable face with comedic timing can change whether they watch or skip.

What This Training Is — and Isn't

It is important to be clear about what this training does and does not do. It is a content strategy: a bet that good production and a recognizable host will get more people to watch and retain the information. It is not, by itself, a protective tool. Companies still need software to detect scams, procedures to respond when something goes wrong, and an ongoing security culture — not just a training video once a year.

For company IT leaders looking at this, the real questions are different from whether O'Brien is funny. What matters is: Do employees actually watch and remember? Does the training work with the company's existing security tools? Are the scenarios updated as AI gets better? This last point is critical. AI-powered scams are changing month to month. Training that was accurate in June might be outdated by September.

The broader context here is that companies have been trying to make security training engaging for twenty years. When I first covered video-based security training back in the 2000s, we heard the same argument: entertainment delivery would finally make people care about security. The results were mixed. What is different now is that the threats themselves are visually dramatic. A video showing a convincing AI deepfake of a real person is inherently gripping in a way a slide about password rules never was. Whether that advantage lasts as deepfakes become commonplace is an open question.

How to Access It

The series launched on June 10, 2026, and is available through Adaptive Security's platform at adaptivesecurity.com/conan. The company has not yet shared pricing or said whether the videos will be sold separately or only as part of their larger product.

For most workplaces, the relevant threats covered here — voice scams, fake videos, AI-written phishing emails — are real risks that could hit their organization. A training program that covers all three, produced well enough to hold people's attention, is a reasonable addition to a company's security efforts. The key is making sure the content is accurate and stays up to date as AI scams evolve.