Hong Kong fraudsters have been caught for the first time using face-swapping technology to take out loans in other people's names, police said on Friday.

Officers said they had arrested six people over the alleged deepfake scam.

"The police found that the fraudsters had attempted to impersonate members of the public, who had reported losing identity cards, using AI face-swapping technology... Their goal was to bypass the facial recognition system to complete online application procedures," said superintendent Dicken Ko.

The force said dozens of attempts were made to take out loans, but only applications worth HK$200,000 were successful.

Ko said the lost ID cards were also used to register phone numbers from which several thousand phishing messages were sent.