You may get a call in the near future from a relative who needs help, asking you to send money as soon as possible. And you can be sure it’s him because you know his voice.
Artificial intelligence is changing that. The new generative AI tool can create all kinds of output from simple text, including essays written in a certain author’s style, pictures worthy of an art prize, and – only pieces of people’s voices can be used – speeches that are as convincing as certain. people.
In January, Microsoft researchers demonstrated a text-to-speech AI tool that, given just a three-second audio sample, could simulate a person’s voice. They do not share the code for others to play; However, he warned that the tool, called VALL-E, “may carry potential risks when misused … such as spoofing voice identification or imitating a specific speaker.”
But the same technology is already out in the wild—and scammers are taking advantage of it. If they can find 30 seconds of your voice somewhere online, there’s a good chance they can clone it—and make something of it.
“Two years ago, even a year ago, you needed a lot of audio to clone someone’s voice. Now…if you have a Facebook page…or if you’ve recorded on TikTok and your voice is on there for 30 seconds, people can clone your voice,” he said. Hany Farid, a professor of digital forensics at the University of California at Berkeley Washington Post.
‘The money is gone’
At Post reported this weekend in danger, describing how one Canadian family became a victim of scammers using AI voice cloning-and lost thousands of dollars. An elderly parent is told by a “lawyer” that their son has killed an American diplomat in a car accident, is in jail, and needs money for legal fees.
The lawyer then handed the phone to his son, who told his parents that he loved and respected them and needed the money. The cloned voice sounded “close enough for my parents to believe they were talking to me,” his son, Benjamin Perkin, told Post.
The parents sent more than $15,000 through the Bitcoin terminal to—well, to the scammers, not to their son, as they thought.
“The money is gone,” Perkin told the newspaper. “No insurance. No more. No more.”
One company that offers a generative AI voice tool, ElevenLabs, tweeted On January 30, he saw “increasing cases of abuse of voice cloning.” The next day, that is declare voice cloning capabilities will no longer be available to users of the free version of the tool, VoiceLab.
“Almost all malicious content is created by free anonymous accounts,” he said write. “Additional identity verification is necessary. Therefore, VoiceLab will only be available at a paid level. (Subscriptions start at $5 per month.)
Card verification won’t stop every bad actor, he admits, but it will make users less anonymous and “force them to think twice.”
Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter that examines what leaders need to succeed. Log in here.