Voice cloning AI poses new threat

Suppose you are called by your child or your partner from an unknown number. He or she is clearly in a panic and asks if you can transfer money quickly, because they are completely broke and in need. Of course you do, but then you later hear from your loved one that nothing was wrong at all. You have become the victim of voice cloning: the latest phishing technique.

Voice cloning rapidly increasing form of scam

science fiction? I wish it was true. Several American and Canadian victims have been fooled this way by scammers who have cloned a loved one’s voice. That way they can pretend to be someone else and manipulate you that way. The police suspect that this latest scam trick will soon spread to the Netherlands.

How does voice cloning work?

Voice cloning means that you have sound recordings of a certain voice analyzed by a machine learning system, for example Vall-E. This artificial intelligence extracts the characteristic patterns and learns to speak exactly like the person with that particular voice. The easiest way is to type the text and then let the AI ​​voice speak it.

For this purpose, this artificial intelligence can, for example, use video recordings of someone while they are speaking. Voice cloning is currently widely used in the film industry. For example, the voice of the Star Wars actor who plays the young Darth Vader was cloned from recordings when he was still young.

High risk of abuse

So you could, for example, have the Ai sing the Ukrainian national anthem in the voice of Putin, or have King Willem Alexander say that he is abdicating the throne to live in Greece.

Russian pranksters have already used this to impersonate President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. In this way they got various European dignitaries on the phone and obtained sensitive information.

Now other scammers have also discovered this dangerous technique. Scammers often use videos that are online, or call the person whose voice they want to clone. In principle, thirty seconds is enough to convincingly clone a voice.

How do you arm yourself against this form of fraud?

If someone you know calls you from an unknown number with a sad story and wants a lot of money quickly, that may not be right. Sure, if they ask for anonymous money that you can’t return, such as money in crypto, or as a pre-paid credit card. In that case, always call that family member or friend on the known number to check whether the story is correct.

And if you send money, always transfer it to a known Dutch bank account. The KYC procedures of banks are quite strict. Although scammers often use a money mule. That is someone who lends his bank account to a criminal. Usually with an electronic transfer you will see the name of the person to whom you transfer the money. If that is not the name of your family member or other loved one, stop immediately.