AI voice cloning scams on the rise, expert warns

foxbusiness.com:

Sen. Mike Braun, R-In., provides insight on growing fears over the technology on The Evening Edit.

Scammers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to clone the voices of individuals they target on social media to place panicked calls to their family or friends in the hope of convincing the unwitting recipient of the call to give them money or access to sensitive information.

Mike Scheumack, the chief innovation officer at identity theft protection and credit score monitoring firm IdentityIQ, told FOX Business that, «AI has been around for a long time and software companies have been using it to advance technology for a while. We’ve seen it start entering into this kind of cybercriminal space slowly, then all of the sudden just ramp up very quickly over the past year or so.»

«We’ve seen a lot in terms of advanced phishing scams, targeted phishing scams, we’ve seen where AI is being used to generate very specific emails and the language is very specific as to who the target is,» he added. «We’ve seen AI voice cloning scams increase over the past year as well, which is a very scary topic.»

Fraudsters carrying out voice cloning scams will record a person’s voice or find an audio clip on social media or elsewhere on the internet. «All they need is as little as 3 seconds, 10 seconds is even better to get a very realistic clone of your voice,» Scheumack explained. The audio sample is then run through an AI program that replicates the voice, allowing the scammer to make it say whatever they type in addition to adding laughter, fear, and other emotions into the cloned voice depending on how the scam is scripted.

GENERATIVE AI TOOLS LEAD TO RISING DEEPFAKE FRAUD

IdentityIQ's Mike Scheumack warns that