New voice cloning technologies makes it possible for scammers to impersonate any one

Published March 17, 2023 five:02 p.m. ET

Artificial intelligence specialist Marie Haynes says AI tools will quickly make it complicated to distinguish AI from a actual person’s voice. (Dave Charbonneau/CTV News Ottawa)

As artificial intelligence technologies continues to advance, scammers are getting new techniques to exploit it.

Voice cloning has emerged as a especially hazardous tool, with scammers applying it to imitate the voices of individuals their victims know and trust in order to deceive them into handing more than dollars.

“Persons will quickly be capable to use tools like ChatGPT or even Bing and ultimately Google, to make voices that sound extremely considerably like their voice, use their cadence,” mentioned Marie Haynes, an artificial intelligence specialist. “And will be extremely, extremely complicated to distinguish from an actual actual reside particular person.” 

She warns that voice cloning will be the new tool for scammers who pretend to be a person else.

Carmi Levy, a technologies analyst, explains that scammers can even spoof the telephone numbers of household and pals, generating it appear like the contact is basically coming from the particular person they are impersonating.

“Scammers are applying increasingly sophisticated tools to convince us that when the telephone rings it is in reality coming from that household member or that considerable other. That particular person that we know,” he says.

Levy advises individuals who acquire suspicious calls to hang up and contact the particular person they believe is calling them straight. 

“If you get a contact and it sounds just a small bit off, the very first issue you really should do is say ‘Okay, thank you extremely considerably for letting me know. I am going to contact my grandson, my granddaughter, whoever it is that you are telling me is in difficulty straight.’ Then get off the telephone and contact them,” he advises.

Haynes also warns that voice cloning is just the starting, with AI potent sufficient to clone someone’s face as nicely. 

“Quickly, if I get a FaceTime contact, how am I going to know that it really is legitimately somebody that I know,” she says. “Perhaps it really is somebody pretending to be that particular person.”

As this technologies becomes additional widespread, professionals are urging individuals to be vigilant and to confirm calls from pals and household prior to sending any dollars. 

“There are all sorts of tools that can take written word and make a voice out of it,” says Haynes. “We are quickly going to be getting that scam calls are going to be seriously, seriously on the rise.”