Scammers can copy any voice – How to know if it’s your loved one or AI

I’ve been waving the red flag about voice scams for what feels like eons now. But thanks to the explosion of affordable AI tools, voice cloning isn’t just for James Bond villains anymore. It’s gone mainstream and bad guys are cashing in. 

The CEO calls

A U.K.-based energy firm’s CEO thought he was on the phone with his boss, the chief executive of the German parent company. The “boss” instructed him to send €220,000 (nearly 233,000 U.S. dollars) to a Hungarian supplier. 

The voice was so convincing, down to the slight German accent and rhythm of speech, that the CEO complied without hesitation. This “boss” was a cleverly designed AI voice. By the time they realized, the money had been transferred to Mexico and distributed to other locations. Ouch!

‘Grandma, please help me!’

A woman received a call from her “grandson” claiming he’d been in an accident and was in jail. The voice, the hesitations, the familiar terms of endearment … it was all eerily accurate. Grandma sensed something amiss when “he” was a bit too pushy about needing money, and she didn’t fall for it.

Olivia told me this story on my show a few months ago. 

“My mom was getting ready this morning listening to YouTube, when all of a sudden her phone impersonated me like I had called her. It pretended to be me hysterically crying and yelling that Will (my husband) was dead — and it was MY voice.” How would you have responded if you were in this situation? So scary.

That voice you hear? 

In the age of TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn and YouTube, where we broadcast our lives (and voices) to the world, scammers are having a field day. 

They’re extracting voice samples, feeding them into their sinister AI machines and producing chillingly accurate voice clones. With that, the stage is set for a scam that’s as emotionally brutal as it is ingenious.

What to do if you get a call like this

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Have a secret conversation with this tech trick

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Want to have a conversation and you don’t want anyone around you to know just by glancing at your texts? Listen now to bring out your inner James Bond.

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James Bond receives a text message on his smartwatch in “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977).

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